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The geometry of a smooth line is characterized locally by its curvature and torsion, or globally by its writhe. In many situations of physical interest the line is, however, not smooth so that the classical Frenet description of the…
The torsional elasticity of semiflexible polymers like DNA is of biological significance. A mathematical treatment of this problem was begun by Fuller using the relation between link, twist and writhe, but progress has been hindered by the…
We perform simulations to numerically study the writhe distribution of a stiff polymer. We compare with analytic results of Bouchiat and Mezard (PRL 80 1556- (1998); cond-mat/9706050).
At ultralow temperatures, polymers exhibit quantum behavior, which is calculated here for the moments <R^2> and <R^4> of the end-to-end distribution in the large-stiffness regime. The result should be measurable for polymers in wide optical…
Semiflexible polymers are widely used as a paradigm for understanding structural phases in biomolecules including folding of proteins. Here, we compare bead-spring and bead-stick variants of coarse-grained semiflexible polymer models that…
We study the mechanical properties of semiflexible polymers when the contour length of the polymer is comparable to its persistence length. We compute the exact average end-to-end distance and shape of the polymer for different boundary…
Wetting and drying phenomena are studied for flexible and semiflexible polymer solutions via coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations and density functional theory calculations. The study is based on the use of Young's equation for the…
At ultralow temperatures, polymers exhibit quantum behavior, which is calculated here for the second and fourth moments of the end-to-end distribution in the large-stiffness regime. The result should be measurable for polymers in wide…
We consider the statistical mechanics of a random polymer with random walks and disorders in $\mathbb{Z}^d$. The walk collects random disorders along the way and gets nothing if it visits the same site twice. In the continuum and weak…
Inspired by how certain proteins "sense" knots and entanglements in DNA molecules, here we ask if there exist local geometric features that may be used as a read-out of the underlying topology of generic polymers. We perform molecular…
We study the fluctuations of the directed polymer in 1+1 dimensions in a Gaussian random environment with a finite correlation length {\xi} and at finite temperature. We address the correspondence between the geometrical transverse…
We discuss the appropriate techniques for modelling the geometry of open ended elastic polymer molecules. The molecule is assumed to have fixed endpoints on a boundary surface. In particular we discuss the concept of the winding number, a…
We study the phase behavior of a symmetric binary polymer blend which is confined into a thin film. The film surfaces interact with the monomers via short range potentials. We calculate the phase behavior within the self-consistent field…
We consider a simple lattice model of a topological phase transition in open polymers. To be precise, we study a model of self-avoiding walks on the simple cubic lattice tethered to a surface and weighted by an appropriately defined writhe.…
We study the statistical mechanics of double-stranded semi-flexible polymers using both analytical techniques and simulation. We find a transition at some finite temperature, from a type of short range order to a fundamentally different…
We study the thermodynamic properties of a semiflexible polymer confined inside strips of widths L<=9 defined on a square lattice. The polymer is modeled as a self-avoiding walk and a short range interaction between the monomers and the…
Self-avoiding walks are studied on the 3-simplex fractal lattice as a model of linear polymer conformations in a dilute, non-homogeneous solution. A model is supplemented with bending energies and attractive-interaction energies between…
The shape of semiflexible polymer rings is studied over their whole range of flexibility. Investigating the joint distribution of asphericity and nature of asphericity as well as their respective averages we find two distinct shape regimes…
We revisit a model of semiflexible Gaussian chains proposed by Winkler \textit{et al}, solve the dynamics of the discrete description of the model and derive exact algebraic expressions for some of the most relevant dynamical observables,…
We investigate the statistical mechanics of a torsionally constrained polymer. The polymer is modeled as a fluctuating rod with bend stiffness A kT and twist stiffness C kT. In such a model, thermal bend fluctuations couple geometrically to…