Related papers: Packaging stiff polymers in small containers: A mo…
We present a method for discovering dense packings of general convex hard particles and apply it to study the dense packing behavior of a one-parameter family of particles with tetrahedral symmetry representing a deformation of the ideal…
We study the optimal packing of hard spheres in an infinitely long cylinder, using simulated annealing, and compare our results with the analogous problem of packing disks on the unrolled surface of a cylinder. The densest structures are…
In recent years significant attention has been attracted to proposals which utilize DNA for nanotechnological applications. Potential applications of these ideas range from the programmable self-assembly of colloidal crystals, to biosensors…
In a variety of situations, isolated polymer molecules are found in a vacuum and here we examine their properties. Angular momentum conservation is shown to significantly alter the average size of a chain and its conservation is only broken…
In this paper, we employ Molecular Dynamics computer simulations to study and compare the statics and dynamics of linear and circular (ring) polymer chains in entangled solutions of different densities. While we confirm that linear chain…
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…
Particles confined in droplets are called compound particles. They are encountered in various biological and soft matter systems. Hydrodynamics can play a decisive role in determining the configuration and stability of these multiphase…
We investigate condensation of a long confined chiral nematic polymer inside a spherical enclosure, mimicking condensation of DNA inside a viral capsid. The Landau-de Gennes nematic free energy {\sl Ansatz} appropriate for nematic polymers…
The advances in new technologies have prompted the need for functional systems smaller than the gyration radius of polymer chains. Thus, understanding how nanoconfinement affects polymer properties has been the focus of a lot of research…
We perform numerical simulations of isolated, partially active polymers, driven out-of-equilibrium by a fraction of their monomers. We show that, if the active beads are all gathered in a contiguous block, the position of the section along…
In many viruses, hundreds of proteins assemble an outer shell (capsid) around the viral nucleic acid to form an infectious virion. How the assembly process selects the viral genome amidst a vast excess of diverse cellular nucleic acids is…
Using molecular dynamics simulations we examine the dynamics of a family of model polymers with varying chain length and torsional potential barriers. We focus on features of the dynamics of polymers that are seen experimentally but absent…
Under many in vitro conditions, some small viruses spontaneously encapsidate a single stranded (ss) RNA into a protein shell called the capsid. While viral RNAs are found to be compact and highly branched because of long distance…
The interaction of amphiphilic polymers with small colloids, capable to reversibly stick onto the chains, is studied. Adhesive small colloids in solution are able to dynamically bind two polymer segments. This association leads to…
Microorganisms ofter move in confined, disordered environments, where hydrodynamic couplings can modify their transport behavior. Using extensive finite-element simulations, we investigate the dynamics of microswimmers -- modeled as…
Advances in DNA nanotechnology have stimulated the search for simple motifs that can be used to control the properties of DNA nanostructures. One such motif, which has been used extensively in structures such as polyhedral cages,…
At ultralow temperatures, polymers exhibit quantum behavior, which is calculated here for the second and fourth moments of the end-to-end distribution in the large-stiffness regime. The result should be measurable for polymers in wide…
Understanding the mechanical instabilities of two-dimensional membranes has strong connection to the subjects of structure instabilities, morphology control and materials failures. In this work, we investigate the plastic mechanism…
The phase behavior of helical packings of thermoresponsive microspheres inside glass capillaries is studied as a function of volume fraction. Stable packings with long-range orientational order appear to evolve abruptly to disordered states…
The competition between toroidal and rod-like conformations as possible ground states for DNA condensation is studied as a function of the stiffness, the length of the DNA and the form of the long-range interactions between neighboring…