Tuesday, January 15, 2013

1301.2777 (Jean-Charles Walter et al.)

Unwinding relaxation dynamics of polymers    [PDF]

Jean-Charles Walter, Marco Baiesi, Gerard Barkema, Enrico Carlon
The relaxation dynamics of a polymer wound around a fixed obstacle constitutes a fundamental instance of polymer with twist and torque and it is of relevance also for DNA denaturation dynamics. We investigate it by simulations and Langevin equation analysis. The latter predicts a relaxation time scaling as a power of the polymer length times a logarithmic correction related to the equilibrium fluctuations of the winding angle. The numerical data support this result and show that at short times the winding angle decreases as a power-law. This is also in agreement with the Langevin equation provided a winding-dependent friction is used, suggesting that such reduced description of the system captures the basic features of the problem.
View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1301.2777

No comments:

Post a Comment