Related papers: Runaway Transition in Irreversible Polymer Condens…
After a general introduction to the field, we describe some recent results concerning disorder effects on both `random walk models', where the random walk is a dynamical process generated by local transition rules, and on `polymer models',…
We present the results of analytic calculations and numerical simulations of the behaviour of a new class of chain molecules which we call thick polymers. The concept of the thickness of such a polymer, viewed as a tube, is encapsulated by…
Recent theories predict that when a supercooled liquid approaches the glass transition, particle clusters with a special "amorphous order" nucleate within the liquid, which lead to static correlations dictating the dramatic slowdown of…
Polymer chains decorated with a fraction of monomers capable of forming reversible bonds form transient polymer networks that are important in soft and biological systems. If chains are flexible and the attractive monomers are all of the…
We study the dynamics of an ideal polymer chain in a crowded, viscoelastic medium and in the presence of active forces. The motion of the centre of mass and of individual monomers is calculated. On time scales that are comparable to the…
The coil-globule transition of hetero-polymer chains is studied here. By means of extensive Molecular Dynamics simulations, we show that the transition is directly linked to the complexity of the chain, which depends on the number of…
This study deals with polymer looping, an important process in many chemical and biological systems. We investigate basic questions on the looping dynamics of a polymer under tension using the freely-jointed chain (FJC) model. Previous…
We present simulations on a binary blend of bead-spring polymer chains. The introduction of monomer size disparity yields very different relaxation times for each component of the blend. Competition between two different arrest mechanisms,…
Effective and fast convergence toward an equilibrium state for long-chain polymer melts is realized by a hybrid method coupling molecular dynamics and the elastic continuum. The required simulation time to achieve the equilibrium state is…
We investigate the irreversible evolution of a small system in which a chemical reaction takes place. We have two main goals: the first requires to find an equation to produce a time-irreversible behavior,the second consists in introducing…
While the dynamics of polymer chains in equilibrium media is well understood by now, the polymer dynamics in active non-equilibrium environments can be very different. Here we study the dynamics of polymers in a viscous medium containing…
We study the conformation and dynamics of a single polymer chain that is pulled by a constant force applied at its one end with the other end free. Such a situation is relevant to the growing technology of manipulating individual…
We investigate the crystallization of a single, flexible homopolymer chain using transition path sampling (TPS). The chain consists of N identical spherical monomers evolved according to Langevin dynamics. While neighboring monomers are…
We consider directed polymers in 1+1 spatial dimension under action of an external repulsive potential along a line. Using the exact mapping onto imaginary time evolution of free fermions we find that for sufficiently strong potential the…
Biomolecular condensates formed through the phase separation of proteins and nucleic acids are widely observed, offering a fundamental means of organizing intracellular materials in a membrane-less fashion. Traditionally, these condensates…
Significant challenges exist in the nonlinear extensional rheology of entangled polymers. With simulations, we show that the key to understanding this problem is to recognize the existence and importance of a strain-induced crossover from…
Active processes in living systems generate nonequilibrium forces that deform embedded passive macromolecules. To understand how such dynamics influence polymer conformation, we study a flexible passive chain in an active nematic fluid.…
We study the diffusion of a linear polymer in the presence of permeable membranes without excluded volume interactions, using scaling theory and Monte Carlo simulations. We find that the average time it takes for a chain with polymerization…
In this paper we extend the Gaussian self-consistent method to permit study of the equilibrium and kinetics of conformational transitions for heteropolymers with any given primary sequence. The kinetic equations earlier derived by us are…
We study the structures of a ribbon or ladder polymer immersed in poor solvents. The anisotropic bending rigidity coupled with the surface tension leads ribbon polymers to spontaneous formation of highly anisotropic condensates in poor…