Related papers: Soft macromolecular confinement
Models for fluid deformable surfaces provide valid theories to describe the dynamics of thin fluidic sheets of soft materials. To use such models in morphogenesis and development requires to incorporate active forces. We consider active…
We investigate the morphology of a toroidal fluid membrane vesicle confined inside a spherical container. The equilibrium shapes are assembled in a geometrical phase diagram as a function of scaled area and reduced volume of the membrane.…
We present a computer simulation of entangled polymer solutions at equilibrium. The chains repel each other via a soft Gaussian potential, appropriate for semi-dilute solutions at the scale of a correlation blob. The key innovation to…
The assembly of curved protein rods on fluid membranes is studied using implicit-solvent meshless membrane simulations. As the rod curvature increases, the rods on a membrane tube assemble along the azimuthal direction first and…
Connecting cell behavior to tissue shape and mechanics is a key challenge in the physics of morphogenesis. Cytoskeletal turnover precludes a fixed reference state, and tensions are actively generated independently of strain; so conventional…
Continuum Monte-Carlo simulations at constant pressure are performed on short chain molecules at surfaces. The rodlike chains, consisting of seven effective monomers, are attached at one end to a flat twodimensional substrate. It is found…
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…
Soft particles display highly versatile properties with respect to hard colloids, even more so at fluid-fluid interfaces. In particular, microgels, consisting of a cross-linked polymer network, are able to deform and flatten upon adsorption…
Mean-field techniques provide a rather accurate description of single-chain conformations in spatially inhomogeneous polymer systems containing interfaces or surfaces. Intermolecular correlations, however, are not described by the…
Equilibration of polymer melts containing highly entangled long polymer chains in confinement or with free surfaces is a challenge for computer simulations. We approach this problem by first studying polymer melts based on the soft-sphere…
Isolated domains in lipid monolayers exhibit shape transitions as a consequence of the competing effects of line tension and long-range dipolar interactions. Nontrivial integrals ultimately arise in instability analysis calculations of…
One of the central appealing properties of magnetic gels and elastomers is that their elastic moduli can reversibly be adjusted from outside by applying magnetic fields. The impact of the internal magnetic particle distribution on this…
We provide a two dimensional deformation model to describe how soft squishy circular particles respond to external forces and collisions. This model involves formulating mathematical equations and algorithms for the shape of a deformed…
Microtubules, the primary components of the chromosome segregation machinery, are stabilized by longitudinal and lateral non-covalent bonds between the tubulin subunits. However, the thermodynamics of these bonds and the microtubule…
The constraints imposed by nano- and microscale confinement on the conformational degrees of freedom of thermally fluctuating biopolymers are utilized in contemporary nano-devices to specifically elongate and manipulate single chains. A…
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…
Fundamental theories and models of many-body physics can be probed in experiments on ultracold atoms held in place by electromagnetic fields. In particular, of considerable interest are systems under curved confinement, since they can yield…
The statistical-mechanical study of the equilibrium properties of fluids, starting from the knowledge of the interparticle interaction potential, is essential to understand the role that microscopic interaction between individual particles…
The effect of a finite torque on semiflexible polymers in a confined environment is investigated. It is shown how a new lengthscale appears in the strongly confined limit. The influence of a torque on the extension of biopolymers in…
The vibrational dynamics of a model polymer glass is studied by Molecular Dynamics simulations. The focus is on the "soft" monomers with high participation to the lower-frequency vibrational modes contributing to the thermodynamic anomalies…