Related papers: Entropic organization of topologically modified ri…
We study the emerging self-organization in active ring suspensions, focusing on how the rings' orientational order and geometric entanglement vary with density and spatial confinement. To quantify entanglement, we introduce the wrapping…
Experiments using nanofluidic devices have proven effective in characterizing the physical properties of polymers confined to small cavities. Two recent studies using such methods examined the organization and dynamics of two DNA molecules…
The interplay between the topological and geometrical properties of a polymer ring can be clarified by establishing the entanglement trapped in any portion (arc) of the ring. The task requires to close the open arcs into a ring, and the…
A variational framework is developed to examine the equilibrium states of a semi-flexible polymer that is constrained to lie on a fixed surface. As an application the confinement of a closed polymer loop of fixed length $2\pi R$ within a…
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…
Chromosomes are crumpled polymer chains further folded into a sequence of stochastic loops via loop extrusion. While extrusion has been verified experimentally, the particular means by which the extruding complexes bind DNA polymer remains…
The effects of entanglement in solutions and melts of unknotted ring polymers have been addressed by several theoretical and numerical studies. The system properties have been typically profiled as a function of ring contour length at fixed…
We study the interplay between entropy and topological constraints for a polymer chain in which sliding rings (slip-links) enforce pair contacts between monomers. These slip-links divide a closed ring polymer into a number of sub-loops…
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…
Topological constraints can affect both equilibrium and dynamic properties of polymer systems, and can play a role in the organization of chromosomes. Despite many theoretical studies, the effects of topological constraints on the…
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…
Topologically constrained genome-like polymers often double-fold into tree-like configurations. Here we calculate the exact number of tightly double-folded configurations available to a ring polymer in ideal conditions. For this purpose, we…
Unconcatenated, unknotted polymer rings in the melt are subject to strong interactions with neighboring chains due to the presence of topological constraints. We study this by computer simulation using the bond-fluctuation algorithm for…
The statistical mechanics of polymer loops entangled in the two-dimensional array of randomly distributed obstacles of infinite length is discussed. The area of the loop projected to the plane perpendicular to the obstacles is used as a…
In the presented work we study, by means of numerical simulations, the behaviour of a suspension of active ring polymers in the bulk and under lateral confinement. When changing the separation between the confining planes and the polymers'…
We systematically explore the self-assembly of semi-flexible polymers in deformable spherical confinement across a wide regime of chain stiffness, contour lengths and packing fractions by means of coarse-grained molecular dynamics…
Packing under confinement could generate rich ordered structures through entropic effects, which is a fundamental problem in condensed matter, biophysics and material science. The influence of confinement to the anisotropic hard…
We enumerate all minimal energy packings (MEPs) for small single linear and ring polymers composed of spherical monomers with contact attractions and hard-core repulsions, and compare them to corresponding results for monomer packings. We…
The static and dynamic properties of ring polymers in concentrated solutions remains one of the last deep unsolved questions in Polymer Physics. At the same time, the nature of the glass transition in polymeric systems is also not well…
The number of configurations of a polymer is reduced in the presence of a barrier or an obstacle. The resulting loss of entropy adds a repulsive component to other forces generated by interaction potentials. When the obstructions are scale…