Writhe-induced knotting in a lattice polymer
Soft Condensed Matter
2015-06-23 v1 Statistical Mechanics
Abstract
We consider a simple lattice model of a topological phase transition in open polymers. To be precise, we study a model of self-avoiding walks on the simple cubic lattice tethered to a surface and weighted by an appropriately defined writhe. We also consider the effect of pulling the untethered end of the polymer from the surface. Regardless of the force we find a first-order phase transition which we argue is a consequence of increased knotting in the lattice polymer, rather than due to other effects such as the formation of plectonemes.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1410.6012,
title = {Writhe-induced knotting in a lattice polymer},
author = {E Dagrosa and A L Owczarek and T Prellberg},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1410.6012},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
16 pages, 9 figures