Related papers: Spontaneous knotting of a flexible fiber in chaoti…
Streamlines, vortex lines and magnetic flux tubes in turbulent fluids and plasmas display a great amount of coiling, twisting and linking, raising the question as to whether their topological complexity (continually created and destroyed by…
We study the dynamics of knotted deformable closed chains sedimenting in a viscous fluid. We show experimentally that trefoil and other torus knots often attain a remarkably regular horizontal toroidal structure while sedimenting, with a…
Stochastic simulations are used to characterize the knotting distributions of random ring polymers confined in spheres of various radii. The approach is based on the use of multiple Markov chains and reweighting techniques, combined with…
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…
We carry out a numerical study on the dynamics of a single non-Brownian flexible fiber in two-dimensional Couette flows at finite Reynolds numbers. We employ the bead-spring model of flexible fibers to extend the fluid particle dynamics…
In thermally fluctuating long linear polymeric chain in solution, the ends come from time to time into a direct contact or a close vicinity of each other. At such an instance, the chain can be regarded as a closed one and thus will form a…
Knots are abundant in globular homopolymers but rare in globular proteins. To shed new light on this long-standing conundrum, we study the influence of sequence on the formation of knots in proteins under native conditions within the…
We report experiments on the deformation and transport of an elastic fiber in a viscous cellular flow, namely a lattice of counter-rotative vortices. We show that the fiber can buckle when approaching a stagnation point. By tuning either…
The rigidity of elastic networks depends sensitively on their internal connectivity and the nature of the interactions between constituents. Particles interacting via central forces undergo a zero-temperature rigidity-percolation transition…
We report on the geometry and mechanics of knotted stiff strings. We discuss both closed and open knots. Our two main results are: (i) Their equilibrium energy as well as the equilibrium tension for open knots depend on the type of knot as…
We perform theoretical studies of stretching of 20 proteins with knots within a coarse grained model. The knot's ends are found to jump to well defined sequential locations that are associated with sharp turns whereas in homopolymers they…
The fragmentation of small, brittle, flexible, inextensible fibers is investigated in a fully-developed, homogeneous, isotropic turbulent flow. Such small fibers spend most of their time fully stretched and their dynamics follows that of…
We investigate the probability for appearance of knots in self-avoiding loops (SALs) on a cubic lattice. A set of N-step loops is generated by attempting to combine pairs of (N/2)-step self-avoiding walks constructed by a dimerization…
Soft intertwined channel systems are frequently found in fluid flow networks in nature. The passage geometry of these systems can deform due to fluid flow, which can cause the relationship between flow rate and pressure drop to deviate from…
This work is devoted to the study of global connections between typical generic singularities, named $T$-singularities, in piecewise smooth dynamical systems. Such a singularity presents the so-called nonsmooth diabolo, which consists on a…
Dynamics of flexible non-Brownian fibers in shear flow at low-Reynolds-number are analyzed numerically for a wide range of the ratios A of the fiber bending force to the viscous drag force. Initially, the fibers are aligned with the flow,…
We characterize the dynamical behavior of a clamped flexible fiber immersed in wall turbulence over a wide range of natural frequencies by means of direct numerical simulations. Only two flapping states are possible: one where the fiber…
As a streak of dye is advected by a chaotic flow, it stretches and folds and becomes indistinguishable from a one-dimensional idealized material line. The variation along a material line of the total stretching experienced by fluid elements…
Using a combination of the replica-exchange Monte Carlo algorithm and the multicanonical method, we investigate the influence of bending stiffness on the conformational phases of a bead-stick homopolymer model and present the pseudo-phase…
Starting with a smooth, non-trivial $n$-dimensional knot $K\subset\bS^{n+2}$, and a beaded $n$-dimensional necklace subordinated to $K$, we construct a wild knot with a Cantor set of wild points (\ie the knot is not locally flat in these…