English

Topologically Driven Swelling of a Polymer Loop

Soft Condensed Matter 2009-11-10 v1 Statistical Mechanics Biological Physics Biomolecules

Abstract

Numerical studies of the average size of trivially knotted polymer loops with no excluded volume are undertaken. Topology is identified by Alexander and Vassiliev degree 2 invariants. Probability of a trivial knot, average gyration radius, and probability density distributions as functions of gyration radius are generated for loops of up to N=3000 segments. Gyration radii of trivially knotted loops are found to follow a power law similar to that of self avoiding walks consistent with earlier theoretical predictions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0403419,
  title  = {Topologically Driven Swelling of a Polymer Loop},
  author = {N. T. Moore and R. Lua and A. Y. Grosberg},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0403419},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

6 pages, 4 figures, submitted to PNAS (USA) in Feb 2004