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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…
Active polymers possess numerous unique properties that are quite different from those observed in the system of small active molecule due to the intricate interplay between their activity and topological constraints. This study focuses on…
The effect of ring stiffness and pressure on the glassy dynamics of a thermal assembly of two-dimensional ring polymers is investigated using extensive coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations. In all cases, dynamical slowing down is…
We present computer simulations of concentrated solutions of unknotted nonconcatenated semiflexible ring polymers. Unlike in their flexible counterparts, shrinking involves a strong energetic penalty, favoring interpenetration and…
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…
Understanding and controlling the rheology of polymeric complex fluids that are pushed out-of-equilibrium is a fundamental problem in both industry and biology. For example, to package, repair, and replicate DNA, cells use enzymes to…
The idea of creating magnetically controllable colloids whose rheological properties can be finely tuned on the nano- or micro-scale has caused a lot of experimental and theoretical effort. The latter resulted in systems whose building…
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…
Dynamically crosslinked semiflexible biopolymers such as the actin cytoskeleton govern the mechanical behavior of living cells. Semiflexible biopolymers nonlinearly stiffen in response to mechanical loads, whereas the crosslinker dynamics…
We use numerical simulations to study tangentially active flexible ring polymers with different knot topologies. Simple, unknotted active rings display a transition from an extended phase to a collapsed one upon increasing the degree of…
We present a novel phenomenological theory describing how topological constraints in prime-knot ring polymers induce collective (cooperative) modes of motion. In low-complexity knots, chain segments can move quasi-independently. However, as…
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…
Semi-flexible polymers in crowded environments exhibit complex dynamics that play a crucial role in various biological and material design processes. Based on the classic reptation theory, it is generally believed that semiflexible polymers…
We present a computer simulation of entangled polymer solutions at equilibrium. The chains repel each other via a soft Gaussian potential, appropriate for semi-dilute solutions at the scale of a correlation blob. The key innovation to…
Recent experiments have been able to visualise chromosome organization in fast-growing E.coli cells. However, the mechanism underlying the spatio-temporal organization remains poorly understood. We propose that the DNA adopts a specific…
Grafting linkers with open ends of complementary single-stranded DNA makes a flexible tool to tune interactions between colloids,which facilitates the design of complex self-assembly structures. Recently, it has been proposed to coat…
Nonequilibrium active polymers provide a minimal framework to investigate biopolymers such as DNA and chromatin under the action of molecular motors. Here we study active ring polymers with controlled topology and show that knot type…
Embedding magnetic colloidal particles in an elastic polymer matrix leads to smart soft materials that can reversibly be addressed from outside by external magnetic fields. We discover a pronounced nonlinear superelastic stress-strain…
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…
We present a novel mechanism for resolving the mechanical rigidity of nanoscopic circular polymers that flow in a complex environment. The emergence of a regime of negative differential mobility induced by topological interactions between…