title: Theory of polymer translocation through a flickering nanopore under an alternating driving force.
abstract: We develop a theory for polymer translocation driven by a time-dependent force through an oscillating nanopore. To this end, we extend the iso-flux tension propagation theory [Sarabadani et al., J. Chem. Phys. 141, 214907 (2014)] for such a setup. We assume that the external driving force in the pore has a component oscillating in time, and the flickering pore is similarly described by an oscillating term in the pore friction. In addition to numerically solving the model, we derive analytical approximations that are in good agreement with the numerical simulations. Our results show that by controlling either the force or pore oscillations, the translocation process can be either sped up or slowed down depending on the frequency of the oscillations and the characteristic time scale of the process. We also show that while in the low and high frequency limits, the translocation time τ follows the established scaling relation with respect to chain length N0, in the intermediate frequency regime small periodic, fluctuations can have drastic effects on the dynamical scaling. The results can be easily generalized for non-periodic oscillations and elucidate the role of time dependent forces and pore oscillations in driven polymer translocation.
authors: Department of Applied Physics and COMP Center of Excellence, Aalto University School of Science, P.O. Box 11000, FI-00076 Aalto, Espoo, Finland.
authors: Jalal
authors: J
authors: Sarabadani
authors: VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd., P.O. Box 1000, FI-02044 VTT, Finland.
authors: Timo
authors: T
authors: Ikonen
authors: Department of Applied Physics and COMP Center of Excellence, Aalto University School of Science, P.O. Box 11000, FI-00076 Aalto, Espoo, Finland.
authors: Tapio
authors: T
authors: Ala-Nissila
mesh_terms: D003198:Computer Simulation; D017276:Friction; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D058608:Nanopores; D010507:Periodicity; D011108:Polymers / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D011108:Polymers