title: Translocation dynamics of a short polymer driven by an oscillating force.
abstract: We study the translocation dynamics of a short polymer moving in a noisy environment and driven by an oscillating force. The dynamics is numerically investigated by solving a Langevin equation in a two-dimensional domain. We consider a phenomenological cubic potential with a metastable state to model the polymer-pore interaction and the entropic free energy barrier characterizing the translocation process. The mean first translocation time of the center of inertia of polymers shows a nonmonotonic behavior, with a minimum, as a function of the number of the monomers. The dependence of the mean translocation time on the polymer chain length shows a monotonically increasing behavior for high values of the number of monomers. Moreover, the translocation time shows a minimum as a function of the frequency of the oscillating forcing field for all the polymer lengths investigated. This finding represents the evidence of the resonant activation phenomenon in the dynamics of polymer translocation, whose occurrence is maintained for different values of the noise intensity.
authors: Dipartimento di Fisica e Chimica, Università di Palermo and CNISM, Viale delle Scienze edificio 18, I-90128 Palermo, Italy.
authors: Nicola
authors: N
authors: Pizzolato
authors: Alessandro
authors: A
authors: Fiasconaro
authors: Dominique Persano
authors: DP
authors: Adorno
authors: Bernardo
authors: B
authors: Spagnolo
mesh_terms: D011108:Polymers / Q000737:chemistry*; D013816:Thermodynamics
chemical_list: D011108:Polymers