Figure 3.

(a) Representative conformations of a membrane with κ = 20 k_BT and ${\mathcal{A}}_{\text{ex}}~40\mathrm{\%}$ as a function of ℒ_t. Panels (b) and (c) show the computed values of the tether length l_t, and radius ℛ_t, respectively, as a function of ℒ_t. These quantities are computed as described in the methods section. The shaded regions mark the three regimes for initial tether formation (i.e., for l_t/ℛ_t < 5) namely, regime 1: suppression of undulations, regime 2: formation of tethers, and regime 3: extrusion of tethers at a constant radius. The boxed numbers in the top panel denote the regimes to which the configurations correspond to.