title: Aggregation of theta-polymers in spherical confinement.
abstract: We investigate the aggregation transition of theta polymers in spherical confinement with multicanonical simulations. This allows for a systematic study of the effect of density on the aggregation transition temperature for up to 24 monodisperse polymers. Our results for solutions in the dilute regime show that polymers can be considered isolated for all temperatures larger than the aggregation temperature, which is shown to be a function of the density. The resulting competition between single-polymer collapse and aggregation yields the lower temperature bound of the isolated chain approximation. We provide entropic and energetic arguments to describe the density dependence and finite-size effects of the aggregation transition for monodisperse solutions in finite systems. This allows us to estimate the aggregation transition temperature of dilute systems in a spherical cavity, using a few simulations of small, sufficiently dilute polymer systems.
authors.affiliation: Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Leipzig, Postfach 100 920, 04009 Leipzig, Germany.
authors.forename: Johannes
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zierenberg
authors.affiliation: Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Leipzig, Postfach 100 920, 04009 Leipzig, Germany.
authors.forename: Marco
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Mueller
authors.affiliation: Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Leipzig, Postfach 100 920, 04009 Leipzig, Germany.
authors.forename: Philipp
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Schierz
authors.affiliation: Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Leipzig, Postfach 100 920, 04009 Leipzig, Germany.
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Marenz
authors.affiliation: Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Leipzig, Postfach 100 920, 04009 Leipzig, Germany.
authors.forename: Wolfhard
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Janke