Related papers: Force--induced depinning of directed polymers

The competition in the pinning of a directed polymer by a columnar pin and a background of random point impurities is investigated systematically using the renormalization group method. With the aid of the mapping to the noisy-Burgers'…

In this paper, we consider four integrable models of directed polymers for which the free energy is known to exhibit KPZ fluctuations. A common framework for the analysis of these models was introduced in our recent work on the…

Stretched polymers with attractive interaction are studied in two and three dimensions. They are described by biased self-avoiding random walks with nearest neighbour attraction. The bias corresponds to opposite forces applied to the first…

We study the effective forces acting between colloidal particles trapped at a fluid interface which itself is exposed to a pressure field. To this end we apply what we call the ``force approach'', which relies solely on the condition of…

Filler-polymer interactions are one of the keys to understanding the physical properties of polymer composites. These interactions give rise to an interface with specific properties that may have a nontrivial effect on the macroscopic…

We develop a renormalized continuum field theory for a directed polymer interacting with a random medium and a single extended defect. The renormalization group is based on the operator algebra of the pinning potential; it has novel…

We study the activated motion of adsorbed polymers which are driven over a structured substrate by a localized point force.Our theory applies to experiments with single polymers using, for example, tips of scanning force microscopes to drag…

Crumpled paper or drapery patterns are everyday examples of how elastic sheets can respond to external forcing. In this Letter, we study experimentally a novel sort of forcing. We consider a circular flexible plate clamped at its center and…

Polymers in confined spaces lose conformational entropy. This induces a net repulsive entropic force on the walls of the confining space. A model for this phenomenon is a lattice walk between confining walls, and in this paper a model of an…

In this paper we consider a two-dimensional copolymer consisting of a random concatenation of hydrophobic and hydrophilic monomers near a linear interface separating oil and water acting as solvents. The configurations of the copolymer are…

We investigate a lattice model of comb copolymers that can adsorb at a surface and that are subject to a force causing desorption. The teeth and the backbone of the comb are chemically distinct and can interact differently with the surface.…

Within a model where micrometer-size soft colloidal particles are viewed as liquid drops, we theoretically study the contact interaction between them. We compute the exact deformation energy across a broad range of indentations and for…

We consider forces acting on objects immersed in, or attached to, long fluctuating polymers. The confinement of the polymer by the obstacles results in polymer-mediated forces that can be repulsive (due to loss of entropy) or attractive (if…

We present an analysis of a partially directed walk model of a polymer which at one end is tethered to a sticky surface and at the other end is subjected to a pulling force at fixed angle away from the point of tethering. Using the kernel…

Frontal polymerization is a promising energy-saving method for rapid fabrication of polymer components with good mechanical properties. In these systems, a small energy input is sufficient to convert monomers, from a liquid or soft solid…

We consider a stiff polymer chain in poor solvent and apply a force at one end of the chain. We find that by varying the stiffness parameter, polymer undergoes a transition from the globule state to the folded like state. The conformation…

We consider the problem of undirected polymers (tied at the endpoints) in random environment, also known as the unoriented first passage percolation on the hypercube, in the limit of large dimensions. By means of the multiscale refinement…

We investigate theoretically the effect of polymer tension on the collective behavior of reversibly binding cross-links. For this purpose, we employ a model of two weakly bending wormlike chains aligned in parallel by a tensile force, with…

We describe some recent results concerning the statistical properties of a self-interacting polymer stretched by an external force. We concentrate mainly on the cases of purely attractive or purely repulsive self-interactions, but our…

A wide variety of interacting particle assemblies driven by an external force are characterized by a transition between a blocked and a moving phase. The origin of this deblocking transition can be traced back to the presence of either…