Related papers: Capillary-driven thinning of DNA solutions
The tube model is a central concept in polymer physics, and allows to reduce the complex many-filament problem of an entangled polymer solution to a single filament description. We investigate the probability distribution function of…
Here, we provide an overview of theoretical approaches to semiflexible polymers and their networks. Such semiflexible polymers have large bending rigidities that can compete with the entropic tendency of a chain to crumple up into a random…
Active polymers play a central role in many biological systems, from bacterial flagella to cellular cytoskeletons. Minimal models of semiflexible active filaments have been used to study a variety of interesting phenomena in active systems,…
Thin viscous liquid films driven by capillarity are well described in the lubrication theory through the thin film equation. In this article, we present an analytical solution of this equation for a particular initial profile: a stepped…
We study the short-time dynamics of a liquid ligament, held between two solid cylinders, when one is impulsively accelerated along its axis. A set of one-dimensional equations in the slender-slope approximation is used to describe the…
A theory is presented of the longitudinal dispersion of DNA under equilibrium confined in a nanochannel. Orientational fluctuations of the DNA chain build up to give rise to substantial fluctuations of the coil in the longitudinal direction…
Plants and insects use slender conical structures to transport and collect small droplets, which are propelled along the conical structures due to capillary action. These droplets can deposit a fluid film during their motion, but despite…
We consider three different continuum polymer models, that all depend on a tunable parameter r that determines the strength of the excluded-volume interactions. In the first model chains are obtained by concatenating hard spherocylinders of…
When a flexible filament is confined to a fluid interface, the balance between capillary attraction, bending resistance, and tension from an external source can lead to a self-buckling instability. We perform an analysis of this instability…
Freezing of complex fluids is central to a wide range of natural and technological processes, where the interplay between heat transport, solute redistribution, and interfacial deformation gives rise to complex morphologies. Unlike simple…
We study the capillary retraction of a Newtonian semi-infinite liquid filament through analytical methods. We derive a long-time asymptotic-state expansion for the filament profile using a one-dimensional free-surface slender cylindrical…
Self-assembling, semi-flexible polymers are ubiquitous in biology and technology. However, there remain conflicting accounts of the equilibrium kinetics for such an important system. Here, by focusing on a dynamical description of a minimal…
Polymer translocation has long been a topic of interest in the field of biological physics given its relevance in both biological (protein and DNA/RNA translocation through nuclear and cell membranes) and technological processes (nanopore…
Run-and-tumble motility is widely used by swimming microorganisms including numerous prokaryotic eukaryotic organisms. Here, we experimentally investigate the run-and-tumble dynamics of the bacterium E. coli in polymeric solutions. We find…
Blends of polymers of different topologies, such as ring and supercoiled, naturally occur in biology and often exhibit emergent viscoelastic properties coveted in industry. However, due to their complexity, along with the difficulty of…
We use an off-lattice microscopic model for solutions of equilibrium polymers (EP) in a lamellar shear flow generated by means of a self-consistent external field between parallel hard walls. The individual conformations of the chains are…
In Part I of this contribution, a systematic coarse-grained description of the dynamics of a weakly-bending semiflexible polymer was developed. Here, we discuss analytical solutions of the established deterministic partial…
Cells regulate gene expression in part by forming DNA-protein condensates in the nucleus. While existing theories describe the equilibrium size and stability of such condensates, their dynamics remain less understood. Here, we use…
Active dynamic processes of cells are largely driven by the cytoskeleton, a complex and adaptable semiflexible polymer network, motorized by mechanoenzymes. Small dimensions, confined geome- tries and hierarchical structures make it…
We investigate the dynamics of nanoparticles in semidilute polymer solutions when the nanoparticles are comparably sized to the polymer coils using explicit- and implicit-solvent simulation methods. The nanoparticle dynamics are…