Title
Total curvature and total torsion of knotted random polygons in confinement
Department/School
Mathematics
Date
3-16-2018
Document Type
Article
Keywords
curvature, torsion, knotted random polygons, confinement
Abstract
Knots in nature are typically confined spatially. The confinement affects the possible configurations, which in turn affects the spectrum of possible knot types as well as the geometry of the configurations within each knot type. The goal of this paper is to determine how confinement, length, and knotting affect the total curvature and total torsion of random polygons. Previously published papers have investigated these effects in the unconstrained case. In particular, we analyze how the total curvature and total torsion are affected by (1) varying the length of polygons within a fixed confinement radius and (2) varying the confinement radius of polygons with a fixed length. We also compare the total curvature and total torsion of groups of knots with similar complexity (measured as crossing number). While some of our results fall in line with what has been observed in the studies of the unconfined random polygons, a few surprising results emerge from our study, showing some properties that are unique due to the effect of knotting in confinement.
Volume
51
Issue
15
Published in
Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical
Citation/Other Information
Diao, Y., Ernst, C., Rawdon, E. J., & Ziegler, U. (2018). Total curvature and total torsion of knotted random polygons in confinement. Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical, 51(15), 154002. https://doi.org/10.1088/1751-8121/aab1ed