Related papers: Topological free volume and quasi-glassy dynamics …
Understanding how topological constraints affect the dynamics of polymers in solution is at the basis of any polymer theory and it is particularly needed for melts of rings. These polymers fold as crumpled and space-filling objects 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…
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 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 interplay of topological constraints, excluded volume interactions, persistence length and dynamical entanglement length in solutions and melts of linear chains and ring polymers is investigated by means of kinetic Monte Carlo…
The effect of ring stiffness and pressure on the glassy dynamics of a thermal assembly of two-dimensional ring polymers is investigated using extensive coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations. In all cases, dynamical slowing down is…
The statistical mechanics of a long knotted collapsed polymer is determined by a free-energy with a knot-dependent subleading term, which is linked to the length of the shortest polymer that can hold such knot. The only other parameter…
The static and dynamic properties of ring polymers in concentrated solutions remains one of the last deep unsolved questions in Polymer Physics. At the same time, the nature of the glass transition in polymeric systems is also not well…
We investigate the dynamical response of glass-forming systems composed of topologically constrained ring polymers subjected to an instantaneous thermal quench, employing large-scale molecular dynamics simulations. We demonstrate that the…
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…
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…
We study of the dynamics of ring polymers confined to diffuse in a background gel at low concentrations. We do this in order to probe the inter-play between topology and dynamics in ring polymers. We develop an algorithm that takes into…
Elucidating the physics of a concentrated suspension of ring polymers, or of an ensemble of ring polymers in a complex environment, is an important outstanding question in polymer physics. Many of the characteristic features of these…
We investigate the statistical mechanics of glass-forming materials and jamming matter by means of a geometrically driven approach based on a revised cell theory. By considering the system as constituted of jammed blocks of increasing…
Typical properties of glassy materials are shown to be captured by a mean-field free-volume theory. Relaxation processes are supposed to be free-volume activated, and different entropy barriers are associated with density relaxation and…
We propose a simple mean-field theory for the structure of ring polymer melts. By combining the notion of topological volume fraction and a classical van der Waals theory of fluids, we take into account many body effects of topological…
Many investigations shed light on various correlations between structure and dynamics in supercooled liquids; however, a general relation between structure and dynamics remains elusive. This molecular dynamics simulation study identifies…
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…
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…
Ring polymers are characterized by topology-specific entanglements called threadings. In the limit of large rings, it is conjectured that a "topological glass" should emerge due to the proliferation of threadings. In this study, we used…