Related papers: Polyelectrolyte Knot Delocalization Induced by Cou…
We present a theoretical model to study the effect of counterion size on the effective charge, size, and thermodynamic behavior of a single, isolated, and flexible polyelectrolyte (PE) chain. We analyze how altering counterion size modifies…
Using a lattice model of polymers in a tube, we define one way to characterise different configurations of a given knot as either "local" or "non-local" and, for several ring polymer models, we provide both theoretical and numerical…
Similarly-charged polyelectrolytes are known to attract each other and aggregate into bundles when the charge density of the polymers exceeds a critical value that depends on the valency of the counterions. The dynamics of aggregation of…
Bending rigidity of a charged membrane or a charged polyelectrolyte screened by monovalent counterions is known to be enhanced by electrostatic effects. We show that in the case of screening by multivalent counterions the electrostatic…
We study the dynamics of a knot in a semiflexible polymer confined to a narrow channel of width comparable to the polymers' persistence length. Using a combination of Brownian dynamics simulations and a coarse-grained stochastic model, we…
The mechanical resistance of a polyethylene strand subject to tension and the way its properties are affected by the presence of a knot is studied using first-principles molecular dynamics calculations. The distribution of strain energy for…
We examine the role of the condensing agent in the formation of polyelectrolyte bundles, via grand-canonical Monte Carlo simulations. Following recent experiments we use linear, rigid divalent cations of various lengths to induce…
Properties of polyelectrolytes in tetravalent salt solutions are intensively investigated by a coarse-grained model. The concentration of salt and the size of tetravalent counterions are found playing a decisive role on chain properties. If…
Recent experiments demonstrated that knots in single DNA strands can be formed by hydrodynamic compression in a nanochannel. In this letter, we further elucidate the underlying molecular mechanisms by carrying out a compression experiment…
The folding transition of biopolymers from the coil to compact structures has attracted wide research interest in the past and is well studied in polymer physics. Recent seminal works on DNA in confined devices have shown that these long…
The localization length of a low energy tightly bound electron-hole pair (excitons) is calculated by exact diagonalization for small interacting disordered systems. The exciton localization length (which corresponds to the thermal…
Charged rod-like polymers are not able to bind all their neutralizing counter-ions: a fraction of them evaporates while the others are said to be condensed. We study here counter-ion condensation and its ramifications, both numerically by…
The interplay of geometrical and topological entanglement in semiflexible knotted polymer rings confined inside a spherical cavity is investigated using advanced numerical methods. By using stringent and robust algorithms for locating…
Studies of the thermodynamics of complex coacervation of pairs of symmetric, strongly ionizable, oppositely charged polyelectrolyte chains are abundant. To generalize such understanding to asymmetric chain lengths and variable ionizability…
We present a theory for the equilibrium structure of polyelectrolyte solutions. The main element is a simple, new optimization scheme that allows theories such as the random phase approximation (RPA) to handle the harsh repulsive forces…
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…
The association between polyelectrolytes (PEs) of the same size but opposite charge is systematically studied in terms of the potential of mean force (PMF) along their center-of-mass reaction coordinate via coarse-grained, implicit-solvent,…
The low-frequency limit of the electrical conductivity (d.c. conductivity) of differently flexible polyions in aqueous solutions has been measured over an extended polyion concentration range, covering both the dilute and semidilute…
We discuss the entropy of a circular polymer under a topological constraint. We call it the {\it topological entropy} of the polymer, in short. A ring polymer does not change its topology (knot type) under any thermal fluctuations. Through…
We investigate the effects of topological constraints (entanglements) on two dimensional polymer loops in the dense phase, and at the collapse transition (Theta point). Previous studies have shown that in the dilute phase the entangled…