Related papers: Semiflexible Chains under Tension
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…
The folding transition of biopolymers from the coil to compact structures has attracted wide research interest in the past and is well studied in polymer physics. Recent seminal works on DNA in confined devices have shown that these long…
We propose a formalism for deriving force-elongation and elongation-force relations for flexible chain molecules from analytical expressions for their radial distribution function, which provides insight into the factors controlling the…
The results obtained from molecular dynamics simulations of the friction at an interface between polymer melts and weakly attractive crystalline surfaces are reported. We consider a coarse-grained bead-spring model of linear chains with…
Strain stiffening of protein networks is explored by means of a finite strain analysis of a two-dimensional network model of cross-linked semiflexible filaments. The results show that stiffening is caused by non-affine network…
Strain energy density is calculated for a network of flexible chains with weak excluded-volume interactions (whose energy is small compared with thermal energy). Constitutive equations are developed for an incompressible network of chains…
The longitudinal response of single semiflexible polymers to sudden changes in externally applied forces is known to be controlled by the propagation and relaxation of backbone tension. Under many experimental circumstances, realized, e.g.,…
We derive the Frank elastic constants for nematic solutions of semiflexible polymers. We plot these results as a function of the coarse-grained Maier-Saupe quadrupole aligning strength and polymer stiffness ranging from rigid to highly…
The sequence-dependent elasticity of double-helical DNA on a nm length scale can be captured by the rigid base-pair model, whose strains are the relative position and orientation of adjacent base-pairs. Corresponding elastic potentials have…
We analyze the stretching elasticity of a wormlike chain with a tension discontinuity resulting from a Hookean spring connecting its backbone to a fixed point. The elasticity of isolated semiflexible filaments has been the subject in a…
Mean-field theory is an approximation replacing an extended system by a few variables. For depinning of elastic manifolds, these are the position of its center of mass $u$, and the statistics of the forces $F(u)$. There are two proposals to…
Based on a potential theoretical approach, the subsurface stress field is calculated for an elastic-half space, which is subject to normal and uniaxial tangential surface tractions that - in the case of elastic decoupling - correspond to…
Active polymers play a central role in many biological systems, from bacterial flagella to cellular cytoskeletons. Minimal models of semiflexible active filaments have been used to study a variety of interesting phenomena in active systems,…
We study the dynamical response of a single semiflexible polymer chain based on the theory developed by Hallatschek et al. for the wormlike-chain model. The linear viscoelastic response under oscillatory forces acting at the two chain ends…
Loop formation between monomers in the interior of semiflexible chains describes elementary events in biomolecular folding and DNA bending. We calculate analytically the interior distance distribution function for semiflexible chains using…
DNA stretching experiments are usually interpreted using the worm-like chain model; the persistence length A appearing in the model is then interpreted as the elastic stiffness of the double helix. In fact the persistence length obtained by…
We analyze the force-extension curve for a general class of systems, which are described at the mesoscopic level by a free energy depending on the extension of its components. Similarly to what is done in real experiments, the total length…
We review the physical properties of macromolecular networks, consisting of semiflexible polymers such as actin. We start by giving a theoretical analysis of the conformational statistics and mechanical response of single filaments.…
We present a numerical solution of the Worm-Like Chain (WLC) model for semi-flexible polymers. We display graphs for the end-to-end distance distribution and the force-extension relation expected from the model. We predict the expected…
Static and dynamical properties of weakly coupled antiferromagnetic spin chains are treated using a mean--field approximation for the interchain coupling and exact results for the resulting effective one--dimensional problem. Results for…