Longitudinal response of confined semiflexible polymers

Item Type:	Article
Title:	Longitudinal response of confined semiflexible polymers
Creators Name:	Thueroff, F. and Obermayer, B. and Frey, E.
Abstract:	The longitudinal response of single semiflexible polymers to sudden changes in externally applied forces is known to be controlled by the propagation and relaxation of backbone tension. Under many experimental circumstances, realized, for example, in nanofluidic devices or in polymeric networks or solutions, these polymers are effectively confined in a channel- or tubelike geometry. By means of heuristic scaling laws and rigorous analytical theory, we analyze the tension dynamics of confined semiflexible polymers for various generic experimental setups. It turns out that in contrast to the well-known linear response, the influence of confinement on the nonlinear dynamics can largely be described as that of an effective prestress. We also study the free relaxation of an initially confined chain, finding a surprising superlinear ~t(9/8) growth law for the change in end-to-end distance at short times.
Keywords:	Biopolymers, Chemical Models, Computer Simulation, Elastic Modulus, Molecular Conformation, Molecular Models
Source:	Physical Review E
ISSN:	1539-3755
Publisher:	American Physical Society
Volume:	83
Number:	2 Pt 1
Page Range:	021802
Date:	February 2011
Official Publication:	https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.83.021802
PubMed:	View item in PubMed

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