Related papers: Measuring topological constraint relaxation in rin…
Large scale molecular dynamics simulations on graphic processing units (GPUs) are employed to study the scaling behavior of ring polymers with various topological constraints in melts. Typical sizes of rings containing $3_1$, $5_1$ knots…
Molecular dynamics simulations were conducted to investigate the structural properties of melts of nonconcatenated ring polymers and compared to melts of linear polymers. The longest rings were composed of N=1600 monomers per chain which…
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…
Polymer systems in slab geometries are studied on the basis of the recently presented Gaussian Ellipsoid Model [J. Chem. Phys. 114, 7655 (2001)].The potential of the confining walls has an exponential shape. For homogeneous systems in…
We use Brownian dynamics simulations and advanced topological profiling methods to characterize the out-of-equilibrium evolution of self-entanglement in linear polymers confined into nano-channels and under periodic compression. We…
In this review we provide an organized summary of the theoretical and computational results which are available for polymers subject to spatial or topological constraints. Because of the interdisciplinary character of the topic, we provide…
Current theories on the conformation and dynamics of unknotted and non-concatenated ring polymers in melt conditions describe each ring as a tree-like double-folded object. While evidence from simulations supports this picture on a single…
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 present a new strategy for introducing population balances into full-chain constitutive models of living polymers with linear chain architectures. We provide equations to describe a range of stress relaxation processes covering both…
One of the most challenging problems in polymer physics is providing a theoretical description for the behaviour of rings in dense solutions and melts. Although it is nowadays well established that the overall size of a ring in these…
Constitutive equations are derived for the time-dependent behavior of particle-reinforced elastomers at isothermal loading with finite strains. A rubbery polymer is modelled as a network of macromolecules bridged by junctions which can slip…
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…
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,…
We study the conformational properties of complex Gaussian polymers containing $f_c$ linear branches and $f_r$ closed loops, periodically tethered at $n$ branching points to either a linear polymer backbone (generalized bottlebrush…
We perform simulations to compute the effective potential between the centers-of-mass of two polymers with reversible bonds. We investigate the influence of the topology of the unbonded precursor (linear or ring) and the specific sequence…
We present computer simulations of a dynamic Monte Carlo algorithm for polymer chains on the FCC lattice which takes explicitly into account the possibility to overcome topological constraints by controlling the rate at which nearby polymer…
Understanding the complex viscoelastic properties of polymeric liquids remains a challenge in materials science and soft matter physics. Here, we present a simple and computationally efficient criterion for the topological constraints in…
We study knotted polymers in equilibrium with an array of obstacles which models confinement in a gel or immersion in a melt. We find a crossover in both the geometrical and the topological behavior of the polymer. When the polymers' radius…
We investigate the effect of knot type on the properties of a ring polymer confined to a slit. For relatively wide slits, the more complex the knot, the more the force exerted by the polymer on the walls is decreased compared to an…
We present an extensive analysis of the relaxation dynamics of entangled linear polymer melts via long-time molecular dynamics simulations of a generic bead-spring model. We study the mean-squared displacements, the autocorrelation function…