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Several controversial issues concerning the packing of linear DNA in bacteriophages and globules are discussed. Exact relations for the osmotic pressure, capsid pressure and loading force are derived in terms of the hole size inside phages…
Starting from Gauss and Kelvin, knots in fields were postulated behaving like particles, but experimentally they were found only as transient features or required complex boundary conditions to exist and couldn't self-assemble into…
Geometric frustration is an approach to the glass transition based upon the consideration of locally favoured structures (LFS), which are geometric motifs which minimise the local free energy. Geometric frustration proposes that a…
We consider the spin-1/2 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model on a bilayer honeycomb lattice including interlayer frustration in the presence of an external magnetic field. In the vicinity of the saturation field, we map the low-energy states…
We study the force-induced unfolding of random disordered RNA or single-stranded DNA polymers. The system undergoes a second order phase transition from a collapsed globular phase at low forces to an extensive necklace phase with a…
Many physical systems involve two types of orientational order, which are coupled together. For example, ferroelectric nematic liquid crystals have coupled polar and nematic order, and tilted hexatic phases have coupled polar and hexatic…
Frustration arises for a broad class of physical systems where confinement (geometric) or the presence of a perturbation (kinematic) prevents equilibration to a minimum energy state. By varying the diameter ratio and packing fraction in…
We examine the ground state of a Heisenberg model with arbitrary spin S on a one-dimensional lattice composed of diamond-shaped units. A unit includes two types of antiferromagnetic exchange interactions which frustrate each other. The…
The mechanical separation of the double helical DNA structure induced by forces pulling apart the two DNA strands (``unzipping'') has been the subject of recent experiments. Analytical results are obtained within various models of…
A simple model of DNA based on two interacting polymers has been used to study the unzipping of a double stranded DNA subjected to a periodic force. We propose a dynamical transition, where without changing the physiological condition, it…
Colloidal gels are prime examples of functional materials exhibiting disordered, amorphous, yet meta-stable forms. They maintain stability through short-range attractive forces and their material properties are tunable by external forces.…
We report hybrid lattice Boltzmann (HLB) simulations of the hydrodynamics of an active nematic liquid crystal sandwiched between confining walls with various anchoring conditions. We confirm the existence of a transition between a passive…
Dynamics of the polymorphic A<->B transitions in DNA is compared for two polypurine sequences, poly(dA).poly(dT) and poly(dG).poly(dC), long known to exhibit contrasting properties in experiments. In free molecular dynamics simulations…
To characterize the thermodynamical equilibrium of DNA chains interacting with a solution of non-specific binding proteins, a Flory-Huggins free energy model was implemented. We explored the dependence on DNA and protein concentrations of…
Two-dimensional crystals of classical particles are very peculiar in that melting may occur in two steps, in a continuous fashion, via an intermediate hexatic fluid phase exhibiting quasi-long-range orientational order. On the other hand,…
We show that the solid phase between the 1/5 and 2/9 fractional quantum Hall states arises from an extremely delicate interplay between type-1 and type-2 composite fermion crystals, clearly demonstrating its nontrivial, strongly correlated…
We study the effects of bond and site disorder in the classical $J_{1}$-$J_{2}$ Heisenberg model on a square lattice in the order-by-disorder frustrated regime $2J_{2}>\left|J_{1}\right|$. Combining symmetry arguments, numerical energy…
We examine the conformations of a model for a short segment of closed DNA. The molecule is represented as a cylindrically symmetric elastic rod with a constraint corresponding to a specification of the linking number. We obtain analytic…
The occurrence of coiled or helical morphologies is common in nature, from plant roots to DNA packaging into viral capsids, as well as in applications such as oil drilling processes. In many examples, chiral structures result from the…
Geometrical frustration in strongly correlated systems can give rise to a plethora of novel ordered states and intriguing magnetic phases, such as quantum spin liquids. Promising candidate materials for such phases can be described by the…