Anomalous Elasticity of Polymer Cholesterics
Condensed Matter
2009-10-22 v2
Abstract
We show that polymer cholesterics have much longer pitches than comparable short molecule cholesterics, due to their anomalous elasticity. The pitch of a chiral mixture with concentration near the racemic (non-chiral) concentration diverges like with (for short molecule cholesterics ). The short molecule law is recovered for polymers of finite molecular length once the pitch is longer than a length that diverges like with . Our predictions could be tested by measurements of the pitch in DNA.
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/9408041,
title = {Anomalous Elasticity of Polymer Cholesterics},
author = {Randall D. Kamien and John Toner},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/9408041},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
12 pages, Plain TeX, (1 postscript figure, compressed, uuencoded and appended to paper), minor corrections, IASSNS-HEP-94/48