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Absolute vs Convective Instabilities and Front Propagation in Lipid Membrane Tubes

We analyze the stability of biological membrane tubes, with and without a base flow of lipids. Membrane dynamics are completely specified by two dimensionless numbers: the well-known Föppl--von Kármán number $Γ$ and the recently introduced Scriven--Love number $SL$, respectively quantifying the base tension and base flow speed. For unstable tubes, the growth rate of a local perturbation depends only on $Γ$, whereas $SL$ governs the absolute or convective nature of the instability. Furthermore, nonlinear simulations of unstable tubes reveal an initially localized disturbance results in propagating fronts, which leave a thin atrophied tube in their wake. Depending on the value of $Γ$, the thin tube is connected to the unperturbed regions via oscillatory or monotonic shape transitions -- reminiscent of recent experimental observations on the retraction and atrophy of axons. We elucidate our findings through a weakly nonlinear analysis, which shows membrane dynamics may be approximated by a model of the class of extended Fisher--Kolmogorov equations. Our study sheds light on the pattern selection mechanism in axonal shapes by recognizing the existence of two Lifshitz points, at which the front dynamics undergo steady-to-oscillatory bifurcations.