Title
Symmetry-breaking in cumulative measures of shapes of polymer models
Department/School
Mathematics
Date
10-20-2010
Document Type
Article
Keywords
polymer models
Abstract
Using numerical simulations we investigate shapes of random equilateral open and closed chains, one of the simplest models of freely fluctuating polymers in a solution. We are interested in the 3D density distribution of the modeled polymers where the polymers have been aligned with respect to their three principal axes of inertia. This type of approach was pioneered by Theodorou and Suter in 1985. While individual configurations of the modeled polymers are almost always nonsymmetric, the approach of Theodorou and Suter results in cumulative shapes that are highly symmetric. By taking advantage of asymmetries within the individual configurations, we modify the procedure of aligning independent configurations in a way that shows their asymmetry. This approach reveals, for example, that the 3D density distribution for linear polymers has a bean shape predicted theoretically by Kuhn. The symmetry-breaking approach reveals complementary information to the traditional, symmetrical, 3D density distributions originally introduced by Theodorou and Suter.
Volume
133
Issue
15
Published in
The Journal of Chemical Physics
Citation/Other Information
Millett, K. C., Rawdon, E. J., Tran, V. T., & Stasiak, A. (2010). Symmetry-breaking in cumulative measures of shapes of polymer models. The Journal of Chemical Physics, 133(15), 154113–154113–4. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3495482