Tightness of slip-linked polymer chains
Abstract
We study the interplay between entropy and topological constraints for a polymer chain in which sliding rings (slip-links) enforce pair contacts between monomers. These slip-links divide a closed ring polymer into a number of sub-loops which can exchange length between each other. In the ideal chain limit, we find the joint probability density function for the sizes of segments within such a slip-linked polymer chain (paraknot). A particular segment is tight (small in size) or loose (of the order of the overall size of the paraknot) depending on both the number of slip-links it incorporates and its competition with other segments. When self-avoiding interactions are included, scaling arguments can be used to predict the statistics of segment sizes for certain paraknot configurations.
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0202075,
title = {Tightness of slip-linked polymer chains},
author = {Ralf Metzler and Andreas Hanke and Paul G. Dommersnes and Yacov Kantor and Mehran Kardar},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0202075},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
10 pages, 6 figures, REVTeX4