Related papers: Entangled Dynamics of a Stiff Polymer
The transport of an infinitely thin, hard rod in a random, dense array of point obstacles is investigated by molecular dynamics simulations. Our model mimics the sterically hindered dynamics in dense needle liquids. The center-of-mass…
We study the dynamics of solutions of infinitely thin needles up to densities deep in the semidilute regime by Brownian dynamics simulations. For high densities, these solutions become strongly entangled and the motion of a needle is…
The effects of entanglement in solutions and melts of unknotted ring polymers have been addressed by several theoretical and numerical studies. The system properties have been typically profiled as a function of ring contour length at fixed…
Here, we provide an overview of theoretical approaches to semiflexible polymers and their networks. Such semiflexible polymers have large bending rigidities that can compete with the entropic tendency of a chain to crumple up into a random…
We investigate the stretching response of a thick polymer model by means of extensive stochastic simulations. The computational results are synthesized in an analytic expression that characterizes how the force versus elongation curve…
We consider multi-chain protein native structures and propose a criterion that determines whether two chains in the system are entangled or not. The criterion is based on the behavior observed by pulling at both temini of each chain…
Molecular dynamics simulation of a generic polymer model is applied to study melts of polymers with different types of intrinsic stiffness. Important static observables of the single chain such as gyration radius or persistence length are…
Many organisms exhibit branching morphologies that twist around each other and become entangled. Entanglement occurs when different objects interlock, creating complex and often irreversible configurations. This physical phenomenon is…
We present an analytical and computational study characterizing the structural and dynamical properties of an active filament confined in cylindrical channels. We first outline the effects of the interplay between confinement and polar…
Nanoscale and microscale confinement of biopolymers naturally occurs in cells and has been recently achieved in artificial structures designed for nanotechnological applications. Here, we present an extensive theoretical investigation of…
We present a general theoretical analysis of semiflexible filaments subject to viscous drag or point forcing. These are the relevant forces in dynamic experiments designed to measure biopolymer bending moduli. By analogy with the ``Stokes…
The interplay between the topological and geometrical properties of a polymer ring can be clarified by establishing the entanglement trapped in any portion (arc) of the ring. The task requires to close the open arcs into a ring, and the…
Entanglement of polymer chains is ubiquitous in elastomers, gels, and biological tissues. While the effects of chain entanglement on elasticity and viscoelasticity of polymer networks have been intensively studied, it remains elusive how…
Equilibration of polymer melts containing highly entangled long polymer chains in confinement or with free surfaces is a challenge for computer simulations. We approach this problem by first studying polymer melts based on the soft-sphere…
We present a novel mechanism for resolving the mechanical rigidity of nanoscopic circular polymers that flow in a complex environment. The emergence of a regime of negative differential mobility induced by topological interactions between…
Packings of macroscopic granular chains capture some of the essential aspects of molecular polymer systems and have been suggested as a paradigm to understand the physics on a molecular scale. However, here we demonstrate that the…
We present a unified theory for the longitudinal dynamic response of a stiff polymer in solution to various external perturbations (mechanical excitations, hydrodynamic flows, electrical fields, temperature quenches ...) that can be…
Recent experiments have demonstrated that the nonlinear elasticity of in vitro networks of the biopolymer actin is dramatically altered in the presence of a flexible cross-linker such as the abundant cytoskeletal protein filamin. The basic…
The reptation concept in polymer dynamics is studied for model chains with added stiffness. The main idea of a chain diffusing inside a tube can be transferred from fully flexible chains. However, the picture, which renormalizes the chain…
This review describes the development and applications of multi-chain coarse-grained simulations for entangled polymer dynamics. The mean-field tube model has long served as the standard paradigm for describing the many-body entanglement…