Ring polymers in the melt state: the physics of crumpling.
The conformational statistics of ring polymers in melts or dense solutions is strongly affected by their quenched microscopic topological state. The effect is particularly strong for nonconcatenated unknotted rings, which are known to crumple and segregate and which have been implicated as models for the generic behavior of interphase chromosomes. Here we use a computationally efficient multiscale approach to show that melts of rings of total contour length Lr can be quantitatively mapped onto melts of interacting lattice trees with gyration radii ⟨R(g)(2)(Lr)⟩ ∝ L(r)(2ν) and ν = 0.32 ± 0.01.
SISSA - Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati, Via Bonomea 265, 34136 Trieste, Italy.
Angelo
A
Rosa
Laboratoire de Physique et Centre Blaise Pascal, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, CNRS UMR5672, 46 allée d'Italie, 69364 Lyon, France.
Ralf
R
Everaers
D002627:Chemistry, Physical; D005615:Freezing; D008956:Models, Chemical; D008958:Models, Molecular; D008968:Molecular Conformation; D009010:Monte Carlo Method; D011108:Polymers / Q000737:chemistry*; D013329:Structure-Activity Relationship
D011108:Polymers