10 research outputs found
On two intrinsic length scales in polymer physics: topological constraints vs. entanglement length
The interplay of topological constraints, excluded volume interactions,
persistence length and dynamical entanglement length in solutions and melts of
linear chains and ring polymers is investigated by means of kinetic Monte Carlo
simulations of a three dimensional lattice model. In unknotted and
unconcatenated rings, topological constraints manifest themselves in the static
properties above a typical length scale ( being
the volume fraction, the mean bond length).
Although one might expect that the same topological length will play a role
in the dynamics of entangled polymers, we show that this is not the case.
Instead, a different intrinsic length de, which scales like excluded volume
blob size , governs the scaling of the dynamical properties of both linear
chains and rings.Comment: 7 pages. 4 figure