Related papers: Stretching an heteropolymer
We study free electrons on an infinite half-filled chain, starting in the ground state with a bond defect. We find a logarithmic increase of the entanglement entropy after the defect is removed, followed by a slow relaxation towards the…
Force induced stretching of polymers is important in a variety of contexts. We have used theory and simulations to describe the response of homopolymers, with $N$ monomers, to force ($f$) in good and poor solvents. In good solvents and for…
We examine how the distribution of contour lengths and the high-stretch stiffening of individual chain segments affect the macroscopic shear modulus of flexible polymer gels, using a 2D numerical model, in which polymer segments form a…
The competing effect of a periodic pinning potential and random point disorder is studied for arrays of elastic lines or directed polymers. The groundstates are investigated by exact combinatorial optimization. In both two and three…
We determine the distribution of free ends and the monomer insertion potential in the strongly-stretched limit for regularly and statistically branched polymer brushes. We find that the end density flattens in the limit of very strong…
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…
In these lecture notes, which are based on the mini-course given at 2013 Prague School on Mathematical Statistical Physics, we discuss ballistic phase of quenched and annealed stretched polymers in random environment on ${\mathbb Z}^d$ with…
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…
Brownian motion and viscoelasticity of semiflexible polymers is a subject that has been studied for many years. Still, rigorous analysis has been hindered due to the difficulty in handling the constraint that polymer chains cannot be…
The reduced density matrix of many-body systems possessing an additive conserved quantity can be decomposed in orthogonal sectors which can be independently analyzed. Recently, these have been proven to equally contribute to entanglement…
We investigate the spread of correlations carried by an excitation in a 1-dimensional lattice system with high on-site energy disorder and long-range couplings with a power-law dependence on the distance ($\propto r^{-\mu}$). The increase…
When injected through a contraction, high molecular weight polymer solutions exhibit a sharp increase of apparent viscosity which originates from stretching polymer chains above a critical extension rate. This chain stretching can also…
By using the transfer matrix approach, we investigate the asymptotic behavior of the entropy of flexible chains with $M$ monomers each placed on stripes. In the limit of high density of monomers, we study the behavior of the entropy as a…
Stretching response of polymer chains under external force is crucial in understanding polymer dynamics under equilibrium and non-equilibrium conditions. Here we measure the elastic response of poly(ethylene glycol) using a lock-in based…
We study the mechanical properties of semiflexible polymers when the contour length of the polymer is comparable to its persistence length. We compute the exact average end-to-end distance and shape of the polymer for different boundary…
While stretching of most polymer chains leads to rather featureless force-extension diagrams, some, notably DNA, exhibit non-trivial behavior with a distinct plateau region. Here we propose a unified theory that connects force-extension…
The structural properties of a linear polymer and its evolution in time have a strong bearing on its anisotropic stress response. The mean-square bond length and mean bond angle are the critical parameters that influence the time-varying…
When liquid-crystalline elastomers pass through the isotropic-nematic transition, the orientational order parameter and the elastic strain vary rapidly but smoothly, without the expected first-order discontinuity. This broadening of the…
Predicting the macroscopic mechanical behavior of polymeric materials from the micro-structural features has remained a challenge for decades. Existing theoretical models often fail to accurately capture the experimental data, due to…
We study the equilibrium properties of an Ising model on a disordered random network where the disorder can be quenched or annealed. The network consists of four-fold coordinated sites connected via variable length one-dimensional chains.…