Role of fluctuations in membrane models: Thermal versus nonthermal.

We study the comparative importance of thermal to nonthermal fluctuations for membrane-based models in the linear regime. Our results, both in 1 + 1 and 2 + 1 dimensions, suggest that nonthermal fluctuations dominate thermal ones only when the relaxation time τ is large. For moderate to small values of τ, the dynamics is defined by a competition between these two forces. The results are expected to act as a quantitative benchmark for biological modeling in systems involving cytoskeletal and other nonthermal fluctuations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]