Effect of Bending Rigidity on the Knotting of a Polymer under Tension

Autor(en)

Richard James Matthews, Ard Louis, Christos Likos

Abstrakt

A coarse-grained-computational model is used to investigate how the bending rigidity of a polymer under tension affects the formation of a trefoil knot. Thermodynamic integration techniques are applied to demonstrate that the free-energy cost of forming a knot has a minimum at nonzero bending rigidity. The position of the minimum exhibits a power-law dependence on the applied tension. For knotted polymers with nonuniform bending rigidity, the knots preferentially localize in the region with a bending rigidity that minimizes the free energy.

Organisation(en)

Computergestützte Physik und Physik der Weichen Materie

Externe Organisation(en)

University of Oxford

Journal

ACS Macro Letters

Band

1

Seiten

1352-1356

Anzahl der Seiten

5

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1021/mz300493d

Publikationsdatum

2012

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

103023 Polymerphysik, 103036 Theoretische Physik, 103015 Kondensierte Materie, 103029 Statistische Physik

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/e6879199-7ca5-49cf-a50d-bdcd268a98d4