title: Confined space and effective interactions of multiple self-avoiding chains.
abstract: We study the link between three seeming-disparate cases of self-avoiding polymers: strongly overlapping multiple chains in dilute solution, chains under spherical confinement, and the onset of semidilute solutions. Our main result is that the free energy for overlapping n chains is independent of chain length and scales as n9/4, slowly crossing over to n3, as n increases. For strongly confined polymers inside a spherical cavity, we show that rearranging the chains does not cost an additional free energy. Our results imply that, during cell cycle, global reorganization of eukaryotic chromosomes in a large cell nucleus could be readily achieved.
authors.affiliation: FOM-Institute AMOLF, Kruislaan 407, 1098 SJ Amsterdam, The Netherlands. suckjoon.jun@necker.fr
authors.forename: Suckjoon
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Jun
authors.forename: Axel
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Arnold
authors.forename: Bae-Yeun
authors.initials: BY
authors.lastname: Ha
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D055598:Chemical Phenomena; D002627:Chemistry, Physical; D002875:Chromosomes / Q000737:chemistry / Q000648:ultrastructure; D003198:Computer Simulation; D004735:Energy Transfer; D008956:Models, Chemical; D011108:Polymers / Q000737:chemistry*; D012996:Solutions; D013696:Temperature; D013816:Thermodynamics
chemical_list: D011108:Polymers; D012996:Solutions