1208.5778 (Mohammad F. Maghrebi et al.)

Polymer-mediated entropic forces between scale-free objects    [PDF]

Mohammad F. Maghrebi, Yacov Kantor, Mehran Kardar

The number of configurations of a polymer is reduced in the vicinity of a barrier, and the resulting loss of entropy leads to a repulsive force. When the obstructions are scale invariant shapes (such as cones, wedges, lines or planes) the only relevant length scales are the polymer size R_0 and characteristic separations, severely constraining the functional form of entropic forces. Specifically, we consider a polymer (single strand or star) attached to the tip of a cone, at a separation h from a surface (or another cone). At close proximity, such that h<View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1208.5778