Analysis on an ODE arisen from studying the shape of a red blood cell

We study the existence problem of a special solution to the Helfrich functional such that it corresponds to a surface of the shape of a red blood cell. The Helfrich functional is also a perturbation of the Willmore functional involving some parameters with physical meanings. With the expected symmetry of the surface, it reduces to an analysis on an ODE with certain shape requirements. We discover a sufficient condition on the parameters which ensures the existence of such a special solution to the ODE.  2003 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.