Related papers: Entangled Polymer Rings in 2D and Confinement
The conformational statistics of ring polymers in melts or dense solutions is strongly affected by their quenched microscopic topological state. The effect is particularly strong for non-concatenated unknotted rings, which are known to…
A variational framework is developed to examine the equilibrium states of a semi-flexible polymer that is constrained to lie on a fixed surface. As an application the confinement of a closed polymer loop of fixed length $2\pi R$ within a…
The lectures review the state of affairs in modern branch of mathematical physics called probabilistic topology. In particular we consider the following problems: (i) We estimate the probability of a trivial knot formation on the lattice…
We numerically investigate the influence of self-attraction on the critical behaviour of a polymer in two dimensions, by means of an analysis of finite-size results of transfer-matrix calculations. The transfer matrix is constructed on the…
Current theories on the conformation and dynamics of unknotted and non-concatenated ring polymers in melt conditions describe each ring as a tree-like double-folded object. While evidence from simulations supports this picture on a single…
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…
The winding of a single polymer in thermal equilibrium around a repulsive cylindrical obstacle is perhaps the simplest example of statistical mechanics in a multiply connected geometry. As shown by S.F. Edwards, this problem is closely…
We investigate, using numerical simulations, the conformations of isolated active ring polymers. We find that the their behaviour depends crucially on their size: short rings ($N \lesssim$ 100) are swelled whereas longer rings ($N \gtrsim$…
Numerical studies of the average size of trivially knotted polymer loops with no excluded volume are undertaken. Topology is identified by Alexander and Vassiliev degree 2 invariants. Probability of a trivial knot, average gyration radius,…
The spatial correlations of entangled polymer dynamics are examined by molecular dynamics simulations and neutron spin-echo spectroscopy. Due to the soft nature of topological constraints, the initial spatial decays of intermediate…
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…
Under high cylindrical confinement, segments of ring polymers can be localized along the long axis of the cylinder by introducing internal loops within the ring polymer. The emergent organization of the polymer segments occurs because of…
We consider an inextensible, semiflexible polymer or worm-like chain which is confined in the transverse direction by a parabolic potential and subject to a longitudinal force at the ends, so that the polymer is stretched out and…
We review a number a recent advances in the study of two-dimensional statistical models with strong geometrical constraints. These include folding problems of regular and random lattices as well as the famous meander problem of enumerating…
We present a detailed account of a recently proposed phenomenological theory for noncatenated ring polymer melts (Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 167802 (2011)). A basic assumption lies in the implementation of the noncatenation constraint via the…
Topologically constrained genome-like polymers often double-fold into tree-like configurations. Here we calculate the exact number of tightly double-folded configurations available to a ring polymer in ideal conditions. For this purpose, we…
The interplay between the topological and geometrical properties of a polymer ring can be clarified by establishing the entanglement trapped in any portion (arc) of the ring. The task requires to close the open arcs into a ring, and the…
We develop a unified scaling framework for the end-position distributions of tethered polymers confined in finite cylindrical geometries. Two observables are analysed: the longitudinal distribution P(x), along the confinement axis, and the…
We investigate the effects of topological constraints (entanglements) on two dimensional polymer loops in the dense phase, and at the collapse transition (Theta point). Previous studies have shown that in the dilute phase the entangled…
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…