Effect of Bending Rigidity on the Knotting of a Polymer under Tension
- Author(s)
- Richard James Matthews, Ard Louis, Christos Likos
- Abstract
A coarse-grained-computational model is used to investigate how the bending rigidity of a polymer under tension affects the formation of a trefoil knot. Thermodynamic integration techniques are applied to demonstrate that the free-energy cost of forming a knot has a minimum at nonzero bending rigidity. The position of the minimum exhibits a power-law dependence on the applied tension. For knotted polymers with nonuniform bending rigidity, the knots preferentially localize in the region with a bending rigidity that minimizes the free energy.
- Organisation(s)
- Computational and Soft Matter Physics
- External organisation(s)
- University of Oxford
- Journal
- ACS Macro Letters
- Volume
- 1
- Pages
- 1352-1356
- No. of pages
- 5
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1021/mz300493d
- Publication date
- 2012
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 103023 Polymer physics, 103036 Theoretical physics, 103015 Condensed matter, 103029 Statistical physics
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/e6879199-7ca5-49cf-a50d-bdcd268a98d4