Related papers: Exact Statistics of Helical Wormlike Chains with T…
The non-equilibrium structural and dynamical properties of a flexible polymer tethered to a reflecting wall and subject to oscillatory linear flow are studied by numerical simulations. Polymer is confined in two dimensions and is modeled as…
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…
I propose a variation of the standard worm--like chain model to account for internal order parameter (helix/coil) fields on the polymer chain. This internal order parameter field influences polymer conformational statistics by locally…
We present a numerical solution of the Worm-Like Chain (WLC) model for semi-flexible polymers. We display graphs for the end-to-end distance distribution and the force-extension relation expected from the model. We predict the expected…
The sequence-dependent elasticity of double-helical DNA on a nm length scale can be captured by the rigid base-pair model, whose strains are the relative position and orientation of adjacent base-pairs. Corresponding elastic potentials have…
We elucidate the elastic behavior of a wormlike chain in 3D under compression and provide exact solutions for the experimentally accessible force-extension relation in terms of generalized spheroidal wave functions. In striking contrast to…
This paper focuses on mechanical aspects of chromatin biological functioning. Within a basic geometric modeling of the chromatin assembly, we give for the first time the complete set of elastic constants (twist and bend persistence lengths,…
It is well-established that many physical properties of DNA at sufficiently long length scales can be understood by means of simple polymer models. One of the most widely used elasticity models for DNA is the twistable worm-like chain…
We present an analysis for the ring closure probability of semiflexible polymers within the pure bend Worm Like Chain (WLC) model. The ring closure probability predicted from our analysis can be tested against fluorescent actin cyclization…
We establish a macroscopic description of the splay--density coupling in semiflexible main-chain nematic polymers with hairpins, using a vectorial continuity constraint for the "recovered" polar order of the chain tangents and introducing…
The time-dependent transverse response of stiff polymers, represented as weakly-bending wormlike chains (WLCs), is well-understood on the linear level, where transverse degrees of freedom evolve independently from the longitudinal ones. We…
Topological constraints (TCs) between polymers determine the behaviour of complex fluids such as creams, oils and plastics. Most of the polymer solutions used every day life employ linear chains; their behaviour is accurately captured by…
The wormlike chain model of stiff polymers is a nonlinear $\sigma$-model in one spacetime dimension in which the ends are fluctuating freely. This causes important differences with respect to the presently available theory which exists only…
Polymer models play the special role of elucidating the elementary features describing the physics of long molecules and become essential to interpret the measurements of their magnitudes. In this work the end-to-end distance of an…
We investigate experimentally the distribution of configurations of a ring with an elementary topological constraint, a ``figure-8'' twist. Using vibrated granular chains, which permit controlled preparation and direct observation of such a…
Based on an estimate of the knot entropy of a worm-like chain we predict that the interplay of bending energy and confinement entropy will result in a compact metastable configuration of the knot that will diffuse, without spreading, along…
Brownian motion and viscoelasticity of semiflexible polymers is a subject that has been studied for many years. Still, rigorous analysis has been hindered due to the difficulty in handling the constraint that polymer chains cannot be…
Helically coiled filaments are a frequent motif in nature. In situations commonly encountered in experiments coiled helices are squeezed flat onto two dimensional surfaces. Under such 2-D confinement helices form "squeelices" - peculiar…
We examine entanglements using monomer contacts between pairs of chains in a Brownian-dynamics simulation of a polymer melt. A map of contact positions with respect to the contacting monomer numbers (i,j) shows clustering in small regions…
An electronic orbital of a dihedral angle of a molecular chain is introduced. A tight-binding Hamiltonian on the basis of the dihedral orbitals is defined. This yields the Green's function between two dihedral angles of the chain. It is…