Polymer Knots in Thin Films: Thickness Dependence, Local Effects, and Stiffness
Soft Condensed Matter
2026-05-05 v1 Statistical Mechanics
Chemical Physics
Computational Physics
Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability
Abstract
We study how confinement affects topology and conformations in polymer films of varying thickness . The knotting probability exhibits a maximum at intermediate thicknesses near the bulk radius of gyration , vanishes at small and approaches bulk values for large . Close to walls, the entanglement length increases monotonically and conformations become flatter. A layer-resolved analysis of structural and topological properties allows us to reconstruct the explicit thickness dependencies by integrating layer-resolved properties of a thick film.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2605.02644,
title = {Polymer Knots in Thin Films: Thickness Dependence, Local Effects, and Stiffness},
author = {Maurice P. Schmitt and Hendrik Meyer and Peter Virnau},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.02644},
year = {2026}
}