Related papers: Fluctuation-induced forces between rings threaded …
Many active materials and biological systems are driven far from equilibrium by embedded agents that spontaneously generate forces and distort the surrounding material. Probing and characterizing these athermal fluctuations is essential for…
We use scaling arguments and coarse grained Monte Carlo simulations to study the fluctuation mediated interactions between a pair of adhesion sites of a bilayer membrane and a supporting surface. We find that the potential of mean force is…
We consider equilibrium relaxation properties of the end-to-end distance and of principal components in a one-dimensional polymer chain model with nonlinear interaction between the beads. While for the single-well potentials these…
Shear flow is known to induce huge density fluctuations in otherwise clear and uniform polymer solutions. This effect is rooted in the elasticity of the entangled polymer network, and can span distances over a thousand chains wide. It has…
Thermal fluctuations in non-equilibrium steady states generically lead to power law decay of correlations for conserved quantities. Embedded bodies which constrain fluctuations in turn experience fluctuation induced forces. We compute these…
Critical fluctuations of some order parameter describing a fluid generates long-range forces between boundaries. Here, we discuss fluctuation-induced forces associated to a disordered Landau-Ginzburg model defined in a $d$-dimensional slab…
The breakage of a polymer chain of segments, coupled by anharmonic bonds with applied constant external tensile force is studied by means of Molecular Dynamics simulation. We show that the mean life time of the chain becomes progressively…
Fluctuation-induced forces occur generically when long-ranged correlations (e.g., in fluids) are confined by external bodies. In classical systems, such correlations require specific conditions, e.g., a medium close to a critical point. On…
We study experimentally the thermal fluctuations of energy input and dissipation in a harmonic oscillator driven out of equilibrium, and search for Fluctuation Relations. We study transient evolution from the equilibrium state, together…
The shape of a polymer plays an important role in determining its interactions with other molecules and with the environment, and is in turn affected by both of them. As a consequence, in the literature the shape properties of a chain in…
The elastic properties of semiflexible polymers are of great importance in biology. There are experiments on biopolymers like double stranded DNA, which twist and stretch single molecules to probe their elastic properties. It is known that…
We investigate the propagation of a suddenly applied tension along a thermally excited semi-flexible polymer using analytical approximations, scaling arguments and numerical simulation. This problem is inherently non-linear. We find…
Single-chain elasticity is of fundamental importance in polymer physics, as it underlies many of the unique properties of polymer systems. Recently, there has been interest in characterizing the elastic properties of catenanes, molecular…
We review recent computer simulation studies of undulating lipid bilayers. Theoretical interpretations of such fluctuating membranes are most commonly based on generalized Helfrich-type elastic models, with additional contributions of local…
We study the statistics of the power flux into a collection of inelastic beads maintained in a fluidized steady-state by external mechanical driving. The power shows large fluctuations, including frequent large negative fluctuations, about…
We study jammed near-crystalline materials composed of frictionless spheres in three dimensions. We analyze the fluctuations in positions and forces produced by small polydispersity in particle sizes. We generalize a recently developed…
The non-equilibrium fluctuations of power flux in a fluidized granular media have been recently measured in an experiment [Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 164301, 2004], which was announced to be a verification of the Fluctuation Relation (FR) by…
Dispersion forces between neutral material bodies are due to fluctuations of the polarization of the bodies. For bodies in equilibrium these forces are often referred to as Casimir-Lifshitz forces. For bodies in relative motion, in addition…
The zero-temperature XX chain is studied with emphasis on the properties of a block of $L$ spins inside the chain. We investigate the quantum fluctuations resulting from the entanglement of the block with the rest of the chain using…
The conformational properties of a semi-flexible polymer chain, anchored at one end in a uniform force field, are studied in a simple two-dimensional model. Recursion relations are derived for the partition function and then iterated…