Dynamics of wrinkles on a vesicle in external flow

Recent experiments by Kantsler et. al. (2007) have shown that the relaxational dynamics of a vesicle in external elongation flow is accompanied by the formation of wrinkles on a membrane. Motivated by these experiments we present a theory describing the dynamics of a wrinkled membrane. Formation of wrinkles is related to the dynamical instability induced by negative surface tension of the membrane. For quasi-spherical vesicles we perform analytical study of the wrinkle structure dynamics. We derive the expression for the instability threshold and identify three stages of the dynamics. The scaling laws for the temporal evolution of wrinkling wavelength and surface tension are established and confirmed numerically.