Related papers: Force-Extension Relations for Polymers with Slidin…
We investigate by means of a number of different dynamical Monte Carlo simulation methods the self-assembly of equilibrium polymers in dilute, semidilute and concentrated solutions under good-solvent conditions. In our simulations, both…
We study the dynamics of a knot in a semiflexible polymer confined to a narrow channel of width comparable to the polymers' persistence length. Using a combination of Brownian dynamics simulations and a coarse-grained stochastic model, we…
We construct a micromechanical version of an early model for topologically constrained polymers -- a 2D chain amongst point-like uncrossable obstacles -- which allows us to explicitly elucidate the role of topological forces beyond…
The dynamics of loop formation by linear polymer chains has been a topic of several theoretical/experimental studies. Formation of loops and their opening are key processes in many important biological processes. Loop formation in flexible…
Some recent results on the rotational dynamics of polymers are reviewed and extended. We focus here on the relaxation of a polymer, either flexible or semiflexible, initially wrapped around a rigid rod. We also study the steady polymer…
We study theoretically the entropic elasticity of a semi-flexible polymer, such as DNA, confined to two dimensions. Using the worm-like-chain model we obtain an exact analytical expression for the partition function of the polymer pulled at…
A coarse-grained molecular simulation approach originally developed for entangled polymeric liquids is extended to model the mechanical behavior of long-fiber networks. The model, based on the slip-link picture of chain entanglements,…
Monte Carlo computer simulations are used to study the segregation behaviour of two polymers under cylindrical confinement. Using a multiple-histogram method, the conformational free energy, F, of the polymers was measured as a function of…
The non-linear stress-strain relation for crosslinked polymer networks is studied using molecular dynamics simulations. Previously we demonstrated the importance of trapped entanglements in determining the elastic and relaxational…
We present simulations on a binary blend of bead-spring polymer chains. The introduction of monomer size disparity yields very different relaxation times for each component of the blend. Competition between two different arrest mechanisms,…
In this paper we compare two polymer stretching experiments. The outcome of both experiments is a force-extension relation. We use a one-dimensional model to show that in general the two quantities are not equal. In certain limits, however,…
Mixtures of polymers of varying topologies and stiffnesses display complex emergent rheological properties that often cannot be predicted from their single-component counterparts. For example, entangled blends of ring and linear polymers…
Constitutive equations are derived for the time-dependent behavior of particle-reinforced elastomers at isothermal loading with finite strains. A rubbery polymer is modelled as a network of macromolecules bridged by junctions which can slip…
Elucidating the physics of a concentrated suspension of ring polymers, or of an ensemble of ring polymers in a complex environment, is an important outstanding question in polymer physics. Many of the characteristic features of these…
A key assumption of polymer physics is that the random chains polymers extend in flow. Recent experimental evidence has shown that polymer chains compress in Couette flow in a manner counter to expectation. Here, scaling arguments developed…
We suggest a theoretical description of the force-induced translocation dynamics of a polymer chain through a nanopore. Our consideration is based on the tensile (Pincus) blob picture of a pulled chain and the notion of propagating front of…
We study the influence of some quenched disorder in the sequence of monomers on the entropic elasticity of long polymeric chains. Starting from the Kratky-Porod model, we show numerically that some randomness in the favoured angles between…
Semiflexible macromolecules in dilute solution under very good solvent conditions are modeled by self-avoiding walks on the simple cubic lattice ($d=3$ dimensions) and square lattice ($d=2$ dimensions), varying chain stiffness by an energy…
Reptation theory has been highly successful in explaining the unusual material properties of entangled polymer solutions. It reduces the complex many-body dynamics to a single-polymer description where each polymer is envisaged to be…
Recent developments of microscopic mechanical experiments allow the manipulation of individual polymer molecules in two main ways: \textit{uniform} stretching by external forces and \textit{non-uniform} stretching by external fields. Many…