Viscous Modes of Fluid Bilayer Membranes

We determine the dispersion relation for a fluid bilayer membrane, taking into account the coupling between bending and the local density of the two monolayers. Apart from important corrections to the conventional bending mode, we obtain a second slow mode which is essentially a fluctuation in the density difference of the two monolayers, damped by inter-monolayer friction. Estimates for a stack of membranes show reasonable agreement with a recent spin-echo study of membrane undulations.