Related papers: Ring polymers in melts and solutions: scaling and …
Unconcatenated, unknotted polymer rings in the melt are subject to strong interactions with neighboring chains due to the presence of topological constraints. We study this by computer simulation using the bond-fluctuation algorithm for…
We present a detailed account of a recently proposed phenomenological theory for noncatenated ring polymer melts (Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 167802 (2011)). A basic assumption lies in the implementation of the noncatenation constraint via the…
The miscibility of polymer blends, a classical problem in polymer science, may be altered, if one or both of the component do not have chain ends. Based on the idea of {\it topological volume}, we propose a mean-field theory to clarify how…
The interplay of topological constraints and persistence length of ring polymers in their own melt is investigated by means of dynamical Monte Carlo simulations of a three dimensional lattice model. We ask if the results are consistent with…
We have developed a theory of polymer entanglement using an extended Cahn-Hilliard functional, with two extra terms. One is a nonlocal attractive term, operating over mesoscales, which is interpreted as giving rise to entanglement, and the…
One of the most challenging problems in polymer physics is providing a theoretical description for the behaviour of rings in dense solutions and melts. Although it is nowadays well established that the overall size of a ring in these…
We have developed a theory of polymer entanglement using an extended Cahn-Hilliard functional, with two extra terms. One is a nonlocal attractive term, operating over mesoscales, which is interpreted as giving rise to entanglement, and the…
Motivated by recent observations that non-concatenated ring polymers in their dense solution exhibit a glass-like dynamics, we propose a free volume description of the motion of such rings based on the notion of topological volume. We first…
Dynamical properties of a long polymer ring in a melt of unknotted and unconcatenated rings are calculated. We re-examine and generalize the well known model of a ring confined to a lattice of topological obstacles in the light of the…
The conformational statistics of ring polymers in melts or dense solutions is strongly affected by their quenched microscopic topological state. The effect is particularly strong for non-concatenated unknotted rings, which are known to…
The bond fluctuation method is used to simulate both non-concatenated entangled and interpenetrating melts of ring polymers. We find that the swelling of interpenetrating rings upon dilution follows the same laws as for linear chains.…
Randomly branching polymers with {\em annealed} connectivity are model systems for ring polymers and chromosomes. In this context, the branched structure represents transient folding induced by topological constraints. Here we present…
In this work a new strategy is proposed in order to build analytic and microscopic models of fluctuating polymer rings subjected to topological constraints. The topological invariants used to fix these constraints belong to a wide class of…
We propose the quantitative mean-field theory of mechanical unfolding of a globule formed by long flexible homopolymer chain collapsed in poor solvent and subjected to extensional deformation. We demonstrate that depending on the degree of…
We study structural properties of a ring polymeric melt confined in a film in comparison to a linear counterpart using molecular dynamics simulations. Local structure orderings of ring and linear polymers in the vicinity of the surface are…
We propose a field-theoretical approach to a polymer system immersed in an ideal mixture of clustering centers. The system contains several species of these clustering centers with different functionality, each of which connects a fixed…
A mode-coupling theory for dense polymeric systems is developed which unifyingly incorporates the segmental cage effect relevant for structural slowing down and polymer chain conformational degrees of freedom. An ideal glass transition of…
Ring polymers remain a major challenge to our current understanding of polymer dynamics. Experimental results are difficult to interpret because of the uncertainty in the purity and dispersity of the sample. Using both equilibrium and…
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…
We model the flow behaviour of dense melts of flexible and semiflexible ring polymers in the presence of walls using a hybrid multiscale approach. Specifically, we perform molecular dynamics simulations and apply the Irving-Kirkwood formula…