Title

Total curvature and total torsion of knotted polymers

Department/School

Mathematics

Date

4-19-2007

Document Type

Article

Keywords

curvature, knots, torsion, knotted polymers

Abstract

Previous work on radius of gyration and average crossing number has demonstrated that polymers with fixed topology show a different scaling behavior with respect to these characteristics than polymers with unrestricted topology. Using numerical simulations, we show here that the difference in the scaling behavior between polymers with restricted and unrestricted topology also applies to the total curvature and total torsion. For each knot type, the equilibrium length with respect to a given spatial characteristic is the number of edges at which the value of the characteristic is the same as the average for all polygons. This number appears to be correlated to physical properties of macromolecules, for example gel mobility as measured by the separation between distinct knot types. We also find that, on average, closed polymers require slightly more total curvature and slightly less total torsion than open polymers with the corresponding number of monomers.

Volume

40

Issue

10

Published in

Macromolecules

Citation/Other Information

Plunkett, P., Piatek, M., Dobay, A., Kern, J. C., Millett, K. C., Stasiak, A., & Rawdon, E. J. (2007). Total curvature and total torsion of knotted polymers. Macromolecules, 40(10), 3860–3867. https://doi.org/10.1021/ma0627673

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