Related papers: Writhing Geometry of Stiff Polymers and Scattered …
We study the geometry of a semiflexible polymer at finite temperatures. The writhe can be calculated from the properties of Gaussian random walks on the sphere. We calculate static and dynamic writhe correlation functions. The writhe of a…
We study theoretically the polarization state of light in multiple scattering media in the limit of weak gradients in refractive index. Linearly polarized photons are randomly rotated due to the Berry phase associated with the scattering…
Motivated by experiments in which single DNA molecules are stretched and twisted we consider a perturbative approach around very high forces, where we determine the writhe distribution in a simple, analytically tractable model. Our results…
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…
Motivated by recent experiments on DNA torsion-force-extension characteristics we consider the writhing geometry of open stiff molecules. We exhibit a cyclic motion which allows arbitrarily large twisting of the end of a molecule via an…
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…
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 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).
This letter considers the dynamics of a stiff filament, in particular the coupling of twist and bend via writhe. The time dependence of the writhe of a filament is $W_r^2\sim L t^{1/4}$ for a linear filament and $W_r^2\sim t^{1/2} / L $ for…
A nonrelativistic quantum mechanical particle moving freely on a curved surface feels the effect of the nontrivial geometry of the surface through the kinetic part of the Hamiltonian, which is proportional to the Laplace-Beltrami operator,…
Scattering through natural porous formations (by far the most ubiquitous example of disordered media) represents a formidable tool to identify effective flow and transport properties. In particular, we are interested here in the scattering…
We propose a spectroscopic method of identifying broken symmetry states of bilayer graphene. We demonstrate theoretically that, in contrast to gapped states, a strained bilayer crystal or nematic phase of the electronic liquid are…
Exploiting the "natural" frame of space curves, we formulate an intrinsic dynamics of twisted elastic filaments in viscous fluids. A pair of coupled nonlinear equations describing the temporal evolution of the filament's complex curvature…
Multiple light scattering is widely used to characterize dense colloidal systems as well as in deep tissue imaging; experiments are often interpreted via a theory of diffusion of the light intensity within a sample, neglecting the vector…
Scattered Light Imaging (SLI) is a novel approach for microscopically revealing the fibre architecture of unstained brain sections. The measurements are obtained by illuminating brain sections from different angles and measuring the…
We find bounds on the difference between the writhing number of a smooth curve, and the writhing number of a polygon inscribed within. The proof is based on an extension of Fuller's difference of writhe formula to the case of polygonal…
Scattering of matter waves through slits has been explored using the Feynman Path Integral formalism. We explicitly plot the near-zero probability densities to analyse the behaviour near the slit. Upon doing so, intriguing patterns emerge,…
We study quantum walks on general graphs from the point of view of scattering theory. For a general finite graph we choose two vertices and attach one half line to each. We are interested in walks that proceed from one half line, through…
Soft elastic filaments that can be stretched, bent and twisted exhibit a range of topologically and geometrically complex morphologies that include plectonemes, solenoids, knot-like and braid-like structures. We combine numerical…
Prompted by recent experimental developments, a theory of surface scattering of fast atoms at grazing incidence is developed. The theory gives rise to a quantum mechanical limit for ordered surfaces that describes coherent diffraction peaks…