Related papers: Statistical mechanics of double-helical polymers
We study the phase behavior of single homopolymers in a simple hydrophobic/hydrophilic off-lattice model with sequence independent local interactions. The specific heat is, not unexpectedly, found to exhibit a pronounced peak well below the…
The polymerization dynamics of double-stranded polymers, such as actin filaments, is investigated theoretically using simple chemical kinetic models that explicitly take into account some microscopic details of the polymer structure and the…
We consider the unwinding of two lattice polymer strands of length N that are initially wound around each other in a double-helical conformation and evolve through Rouse dynamics. The problem relates to quickly bringing a double-stranded…
The effect of finite temperature $T$ and finite strain rate $\dot\gamma$ on the statistical physics of plastic deformations in amorphous solids made of $N$ particles is investigated. We recognize three regimes of temperature where the…
We present a kinetic model of crystal growth of polymers of finite molecular weight. Experiments help to classify polymer crystallization broadly into two kinetic regimes. One is observed in melts or in high molar mass polymer solutions and…
Polymer blends offer an exciting material for various potential applications due to their tunable properties by varying constituting components and their relative composition. Our simulation results unravel an intrinsic relationship between…
We study the rotational dynamics of a flexible polymer initially wrapped around a rigid rod and unwinding from it. This dynamics is of interest in several problems in biology and constitutes a fundamental instance of polymer relaxation from…
We have developed a new multiscale simulation technique to investigate history-dependent flow behavior of entangled polymer melt, using a smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulation with microscopic simulators that account for the dynamics…
The non-equilibrium structural and dynamical properties of a flexible polymer tethered to a reflecting wall and subject to oscillatory linear flow are studied by numerical simulations. Polymer is confined in two dimensions and is modeled as…
We use a one-dimensional random walk on $D$-dimensional hyper-spheres to determine the critical behavior of statistical systems in hyper-spherical geometries. First, we demonstrate the properties of such a walk by studying the phase diagram…
Polymerization and formation of crosslinked polymer networks are important processes in manufacturing, materials fabrication, and in the case of hydrated polymer networks, synthesis of biomedical materials, drug delivery, and tissue…
A {\it new} formula for the force vs extension relation is derived from the discrete version of the so called {\it worm like chain} model. This formula correctly fits some recent experimental data on polymer stretching and some numerical…
Helical molecules change their twist number under the effect of a mechanical load. We study the twist-stretch relation for a set of short DNA molecules modeled by a mesoscopic Hamiltonian. Finite temperature path integral techniques are…
The behaviour of the helicity modulus has been frequently employed to investigate the onset of the topological order characterizing the low-temperature phase of the two-dimensional XY-model. We here present how the analysis based on the use…
Thermally actuated twisted and coiled polymer (TCP) artificial muscles exhibit exceptional specific work capacities but are limited by an inherent competition between load-bearing capacity and actuation stroke. To address this limitation,…
We study folding in 16-monomer heteropolymers on the square lattice. For a given sequence, thermodynamic properties and stability of the native state are unique. However, the kinetics of folding depends on the model of dynamics adopted for…
We perform molecular-dynamics simulations for polymer melts of the coarse-grained polyvinyl alcohol model that crystallizes upon slow cooling. To establish the properties of its high temperature liquid state as a reference point, we…
We study how solidification of model freely rotating polymers under athermal quasistatic compression varies with their bond angle $\theta_0$. All systems undergo two discrete, first-order-like transitions: entanglement at $\phi =…
Chirality in polymeric systems enables a wide range of emergent optical, mechanical, and transport phenomena, yet a unified framework that quantitatively connects molecular-scale geometry to chiral behavior remains lacking. Existing…
The statistical mechanics of a long knotted collapsed polymer is determined by a free-energy with a knot-dependent subleading term, which is linked to the length of the shortest polymer that can hold such knot. The only other parameter…