Related papers: Polymer Topology and the Depletion Interaction
The rapid collapse of a polymer, due to external forces or changes in solvent, yields a long-lived `crumpled globule.' The conjectured fractal structure shaped by hierarchical collapse dynamics has proved difficult to establish, even with…
Cyclic polymers display unique physical behaviors in comparison to their linear counterparts. Theoretical, computational and experimental studies have revealed that some of their distinctive properties are also observed in charged variants…
Via numerical simulations and analytical calculations, depletion forces are studied in mixtures of small and big particles that interact via soft repulsive potentials. While big particles are spherical, small particles are nonspherical with…
We investigate the interaction between highly charged lipid bilayers in the presence of monovalent counterions. Neutron and X-ray reflectivity experiments show that the water layer between like-charged bilayers is thinner than for…
In this article we study from a non-perturbative point of view the entanglement of two directed polymers subjected to repulsive interactions given by a Dirac $\delta-$function potential. An exact formula of the so-called second moment of…
The interplay of topological constraints and Coulomb interactions in static and dynamic properties of charged polymers is investigated by numerical simulations and scaling arguments. In the absence of screening, the long-range interaction…
Effective interactions inherently encompass many-body effects that appear unified. Analyzing these in reverse, that is, separating them into contributions from pairs, triples, or larger groups, is typically intricate and seldom pursued.…
We explore the impact of hydrodynamic interactions on the conformational and dynamical properties of wet tangentially-driven active polymers using multiparticle collision dynamics simulations. By analyzing active filaments with varying…
The adsorption of a single ideal polymer chain on energetically heterogeneous and rough surfaces is investigated using a variational procedure introduced by Garel and Orland (Phys. Rev. B 55 (1997), 226). The mean polymer size is calculated…
The depletion force and depletion potential between two in principle unequal "big" hard spheres embedded in a multicomponent mixture of "small" hard spheres are computed using the Rational Function Approximation method for the structural…
We present results from extensive molecular dynamics simulations of collapse transitions of hydrophobic polymers in explicit water focused on understanding effects of lengthscale of the hydrophobic surface and of attractive interactions on…
The possibility to induce demixing in a colloidal mixture by adding small polymers, or other equivalent depletant agents, is theoretically investigated. By use of Mean Field Theory, suitably generalized to deal with short range effective…
We employ effective interaction potentials to study the equilibrium structure and phase behavior of highly asymmetric mixtures of star polymers. We consider in particular the influence of the addition of a component with a small number of…
We perform computer simulations of mechanically linked (poly[2]catenanes, PC) and chemically bonded (bonded rings, BR) pairs of self-avoiding ring polymers in steady shear. We find that BR's develop a novel motif, termed gradient tumbling,…
The rheological properties of tangentially propelled flexible polymers under linear shear flow are studied by computer simulations and are compared with analytical calculations. We find a significant impact of the coupled nonequilibrium…
We propose a simple mean-field theory for the structure of ring polymer melts. By combining the notion of topological volume fraction and a classical van der Waals theory of fluids, we take into account many body effects of topological…
Nanometer-thick supported lms of polymer melts spontaneously form and spread around sessile droplets that are deposited on oxidized silicon wafers. At steady state, the lms become dense and adopt a uniform thickness which is equal to twice…
The conformational statistics of ring polymers in melts or dense solutions is strongly affected by their quenched microscopic topological state. The effect is particularly strong for untangled (i.e. non-concatenated and unknotted) rings,…
The dynamics of polymer decompression, i.e., a process from compressed, compact state to the relaxed swoll en conformation, can be formally described as a {\it nonlinear diffusion}. We discuss here two basic examples: (i) the expansion, or…
The hydrodynamic lift force that polymers experience near boundaries is known to be a crucial element when considering rheological flows of dilute polymer solutions. Here we develop theory to describe the hydrodynamic lift force on extended…