31 research outputs found
Pressure exerted by a vesicle on a surface
Several recent works have considered the pressure exerted on a wall by a
model polymer. We extend this consideration to vesicles attached to a wall, and
hence include osmotic pressure. We do this by considering a two-dimensional
directed model, namely that of area-weighted Dyck paths.
Not surprisingly, the pressure exerted by the vesicle on the wall depends on
the osmotic pressure inside, especially its sign. Here, we discuss the scaling
of this pressure in the different regimes, paying particular attention to the
crossover between positive and negative osmotic pressure. In our directed
model, there exists an underlying Airy function scaling form, from which we
extract the dependence of the bulk pressure on small osmotic pressures.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure
Pseudo-First-Order Transition in Interacting Self-avoiding Walks and Trails
The coil-globule transition of an isolated polymer has been well established
to be a second-order phase transition described by a standard tricritical O(0)
field theory. We present Monte-Carlo simulations of interacting self-avoiding
walks and interacting self-avoiding trails in four dimensions which provide
compelling evidence that the approach to this (tri)critical point is dominated
by the build-up of first-order-like singularities masking the second-order
nature of the coil-globule transition.Comment: 4 pages with 2 figures included, CCP2001 submissio