Related papers: Entangled polymer complex as Higgs phenomena
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…
We employ a first principles, force-level approach to self-consistently construct the anharmonic tube confinement field for entangled fluids of rigid needles and for primitive-path (PP) level chains in two limiting situations where chain…
The tube model is a central concept in polymer physics, and allows to reduce the complex many-filament problem of an entangled polymer solution to a single filament description. We investigate the probability distribution function of…
Entangled networks of stiff biopolymers exhibit complex dynamic response, emerging from the topological constraints that neighboring filaments impose upon each other. We propose a class of reference models for entanglement dynamics of stiff…
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…
We consider the continuum limit of a recently-introduced model for discretized thick polymers, or tubes. We address both analytically and numerically how the polymer thickness influences the decay of tangent-tangent correlations and find…
The Langevin Equation for cooperative dynamics represents the dynamics of polymer melts with chains of increasing degree of polymerization, covering the full range of behavior from the unentangled to the entangled regime. This equation…
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…
Topological constraints (TCs) between polymers determine the behaviour of complex fluids such as creams, oils and plastics. Most of the polymer solutions used every day life employ linear chains; their behaviour is accurately captured by…
Polymer entanglements lead to complicated topological constraints and interactions between neighbouring chains in a dense solution or melt. Entanglements can be treated in a mean field approach, within the famous reptation model, since they…
We develop a theoretical description of the topological disentanglement occurring when torus knots reach the ends of a semi-flexible polymer under tension. These include decays into simpler knots and total unknotting. The minimal number of…
We numerically and analytically analyze the startup continuous shear rheology of heavily entangled rigid rod polymer fluids based on our self-consistent, force-level theory of anharmonic tube confinement. The approach is simplified by…
In the first part of the paper we show that the constraining potentials introduced to mimic entanglement effects in Edwards' tube model and Flory's constrained junction model are diagonal in the generalized Rouse modes of the corresponding…
The spatial correlations of entangled polymer dynamics are examined by molecular dynamics simulations and neutron spin-echo spectroscopy. Due to the soft nature of topological constraints, the initial spatial decays of intermediate…
Significant challenges exist in the nonlinear extensional rheology of entangled polymers. With simulations, we show that the key to understanding this problem is to recognize the existence and importance of a strain-induced crossover from…
Polymer rings in solution are either permanently entangled or not. Permanent topological restrictions give rise to additional entropic interactions apart from the ones arising due to mere chain flexibility or excluded volume. Conversely,…
The flow and deformation of macromolecules is ubiquitous in nature and industry, and an understanding of this phenomenon at both macroscopic and microscopic length scales is of fundamental and practical importance. Here we present the…
Evolving structure and rheology across Kuhn scale interfaces in entangled polymer fluids under flow play a prominent role in processing of manufactured plastics, and have numerous other applications. Quantitative tracking of chain…
Reptation theory has been highly successful in explaining the unusual material properties of entangled polymer solutions. It reduces the complex many-body dynamics to a single-polymer description where each polymer is envisaged to be…
Classical bond percolation theory studies the conditions for a given point in a random graph to be connected to infinity, or "escape" to infinity, via a sequence of random edges. In this work, we present a higher-dimensional generalization…