5D Entanglement in Star Polymer Dynamics
Computational Physics
2018-09-14 v2
Abstract
Star polymers are within the most topologically entangled macromolecules. For a star to move the current theory is that one arm must retract to the branch point. The probability of this event falls exponentially with molecular weight, and a quicker relaxation pathway eventually takes over. With a simulation over a hundred times faster than earlier studies, we demonstrate that the mean square displacement scales with a power law 1/16 in time, instead of the previously assumed zero. It suggests that star polymer motion is the result of two linear relaxations coinciding in time. By analogy to linear polymers, which reptate with a random walk embedded in a 3D network, we show that star polymers relax by a random walk in a 5D network.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1805.08508,
title = {5D Entanglement in Star Polymer Dynamics},
author = {Airidas Korolkovas},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1805.08508},
year = {2018}
}