English

Behavior of a polymer chain in a critical binary solvent

Statistical Mechanics 2009-10-31 v1 Soft Condensed Matter

Abstract

We present a field-theoretic renormalization group analysis of a polymer chain immersed in a binary good solvent close to its critical demixing point. We first show that this problem can be mapped on a bicritical field theory, i.e. a (Φ2)2(\Phi^{2})^{2}-model with a mass anisotropy. This implies that the end-to-end distance of the polymer is now controlled by a new critical exponent νB\nu_{B} related to the quadratic mass anisotropy operator BB. To show this we solve the RG equation and calculate explicitly the exponents and the mean end-to-end length of the chain.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/9802130,
  title  = {Behavior of a polymer chain in a critical binary solvent},
  author = {M. Stapper and T. A. Vilgis},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/9802130},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

6 pages, accepted in Europhys. Lett

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