Related papers: Entropically driven transition to a liquid-crystal…
X-shaped liquid crystalline molecules (XLCMs) are obtained by tethering two flexible end A-blocks and two flexible side B-blocks to a rigid backbone (R). A rich array of ordered structures can be formed from XLCMs, driven by the competition…
Recent advances in Generalized Ensemble simulations and microcanonical analysis allowed the investigation of structural transitions in polymer models over a broad range of local bending and torsion strengths. It is reasonable to argue that…
We have studied the thermodynamics of isolated homopolymer chains of varying stiffness using a lattice model. A complex phase behaviour is found; phases include chain-folded `crystalline' structures, the disordered globule and the coil. It…
I consider the effects of polymers on the smectic phase of a host liquid crystal matrix. Focusing on the regime in which the polymers are predominately confined between the smectic layers, I find that the presence of the polymers can lead…
Helix-coil transition in polypeptides is an example of a spin model with a preferred spin direction, in the sense that a theoretical formulation of this problem requires to assign a preferred value of spin to the helical conformation in…
Generic interactions e.g. the Coulomb or other long ranged radially symmetric repulsive interactions between monomers of bead-spring model of a semi-flexible polymer induce instabilities in a initially straight polymer chain to form long…
Purely entropic systems such as suspensions of hard rods, platelets and spheres show rich phase behavior. Rods and platelets have successfully been used as models to predict the equilibrium properties of liquid crystals for several decades.…
In this paper we extend the Gaussian self-consistent method to permit study of the equilibrium and kinetics of conformational transitions for heteropolymers with any given primary sequence. The kinetic equations earlier derived by us are…
The thermodynamic behavior of collapse transition in a fully flexible coarse-grained model of energy polydisperse polymer (EPP), a statistical model of random heteropolymer, is investigated in an implicit solvent by means of molecular…
We study a model of flexible block copolymers (BCPs) in which there is an enlthalpic preference for local alignment, among like-block segments. We describe a generalization of the self-consistent field theory (SCFT) of flexible BCPs to…
We present results of numerical self-consistent field (SCF) calculations for the equilibrium mechanical unfolding of a globule formed by a single flexible polymer chain collapsed in a poor solvent. In accordance with earlier scaling theory…
Despite the wide existence of vesicles in living cells as well as their important applications like drug-delivery, the underlying mechanism of vesicle fusion/fission remains under debate. Here, we develop a constrained self-consistent field…
Given a $generic$ two-dimensional conformal field theory (CFT), we propose an analytically solvable setup to study the Floquet dynamics of the CFT, i.e., the dynamics of a CFT subject to a periodic driving. A complete phase diagram in the…
In view of the important role helix-sheet transitions play in protein aggregation, we introduce a simple model to study secondary structural transitions of helix-coil-sheet systems using a Potts model starting with an effective Hamiltonian.…
As a model of soft confinement for polymers, we investigated equilibrium shapes of a flexible vesicle that contains a phase-separating polymer solution. To simulate such a system, we combined the phase field theory (PFT) for the vesicle and…
Polymers adopt extended coil and compact globule states according to the balance between entropy and interaction energies. The transition of a polymer between an extended coil state and compact globule state can be induced by changing…
We investigate the addition of stiffness to the lattice model of hydrogen-bonded polymers in two and three dimensions. We find that, in contrast to polymers that interact via a homogeneous short-range interaction, the collapse transition is…
We explore the non-equilibrium dissipative dynamics of a system of identical charged particles trapped on a closed helix. The particles are subject to an external force accelerating them along the underlying structure. The effective…
By means of extensive replica-exchange simulations of generic coarse-grained models for helical polymers, we systematically investigate the structural transitions into all possible helical phases for flexible and semiflexible elastic…
We present a thermodynamically consistent theoretical framework for lyotropic liquid crystals (LCs) based on the GENERIC (General Equation for the Non-Equilibrium Reversible-Irreversible Coupling) formalism. This formalism ensures…