Entropic force of polymers on a cone tip
Statistical Mechanics
2011-12-15 v2 Soft Condensed Matter
Abstract
We consider polymers attached to the tip of a cone, and the resulting force due to entropy loss on approaching a plate (or another cone). At separations shorter than the polymer radius of gyration R_g, the only relevant length scale is the tip-plate (or tip-tip) separation h, and the entropic force is given by F=A kT/h. The universal amplitude A can be related to (geometry dependent) correlation exponents of long polymers. We compute A for phantom polymers, and for self-avoiding (including star) polymers by epsilon-expansion, as well as by numerical simulations in 3 dimensions.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1109.5658,
title = {Entropic force of polymers on a cone tip},
author = {Mohammad F. Maghrebi and Yacov Kantor and Mehran Kardar},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1109.5658},
year = {2011}
}