Related papers: Ring closure in actin polymers
We study the dynamics of a single chain polymer confined to a two dimensional cell. We introduce a kinetically constrained lattice gas model that preserves the connectivity of the chain, and we use this kinetically constrained model to…
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 conformations of semiflexible (bio)polymers are studied in flow through geometrically structured microchannels. Using mesoscale hydrodynamics simulations, we show that the polymer undergoes a rod-to-helix transition as it moves from the…
If a semiflexible polymer confined to a narrow channel bends around by 180 degrees, the polymer is said to exhibit a hairpin. The equilibrium extension statistics of the confined polymer are well understood when hairpins are vanishingly…
Mutual uncrossability of polymers generates topological constraints on their conformations and dynamics, which are generally described using the tube model. We imaged confinement tubes for individual polymers within a F-actin solution by…
A Flory theory is constructed for a long polymer ring in a melt of unknotted and non-concatenated rings. The theory assumes that the ring forms an effective annealed branched object and computes its primitive path. It is shown that the…
The freely rotating chain is one of the classic discrete models of a polymer in dilute solution. It consists of a broken line of N straight segments of fixed length such that the angle between adjacent segments is constant and the N-1…
We introduce a class of models of semiflexible polymers. The latter are characterized by a strong rigidity, the correlation length associated to the gradient-gradient correlations, called the persistence length, being of the same order as…
Inspired by recent experiments on the spatial organization of bacterial chromosomes, we consider a type of "bottle brush" polymer consisting of a flexible backbone chain, to which flexible side loops are connected. We show that such a model…
The probability of a random polygon (or a ring polymer) having a knot type $K$ should depend on the complexity of the knot $K$. Through computer simulation using knot invariants, we show that the knotting probability decreases exponentially…
Ring polymers are prevalent in natural and engineered systems, including circular bacterial DNA, crown ethers for cation chelation, and mechanical nanoswitches. The morphology and dynamics of ring polymers are governed by the chemistry and…
The semiflexible F-actin network of the cytoskeleton is cross-linked by a variety of proteins including filamin, which contain Ig-domains that unfold under applied tension. We examine a simple semiflexible network model cross-linked by such…
The conformational and dynamical properties of isolated semiflexible active polar ring polymers are investigated analytically. A ring is modeled as continuous Gaussian polymer exposed to tangential active forces. The analytical solution of…
The random-force (Larkin) model of a directed elastic string subject to quenched random forces in the transverse directions has been a paradigm in the statistical physics of disordered systems. In this brief note, we investigate a modified…
We consider a correlated wavefunction including particle-hole pairing at half a reciprocal lattice vector for itinerant electrons hopping on a square lattice in two dimensions and subject both to on-site and nearest-neighbor repulsion. We…
We study the interplay effect of spin-orbit coupling(SOC) and optical lattice to the single-particle physics and superfluid-insulator transition in ultracold Fermi gases. We consider the type of SOC that has been realized in cold atoms…
Solutions of semiflexible polymers confined by repulsive planar walls are studied by density functional theory and Molecular Dynamics simulations, to clarify the competition between the chain alignment favored by the wall and the depletion…
We present a theoretical model for understanding the kinetics of a long polymer in solution. A Smoluchowski-like equation has been used to model the problem of polymer looping with a Dirac delta function sink of finite strength. The results…
We study the optimal packing of short, hard spherocylinders confined to lie tangential to a spherical surface, using simulated annealing and molecular dynamics simulations. For clusters of up to twelve particles, we map out the changes in…
Motivated by a recent adsorption experiment [M.O. Blunt et al., Science 322, 1077 (2008)], we study tilings of the plane with three different types of rhombi. An interaction disfavors pairs of adjacent rhombi of the same type. This is shown…