| Issue |
Europhys. Lett.
Volume 60, Number 1, October 2002
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Page(s) | 53 - 59 | |
| Section | Atomic and molecular physics | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1209/epl/i2002-00317-0 | |
| Published online | 01 September 2002 | |
Pulling knotted polymers
1
School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel Aviv University Tel Aviv 69978,
Israel
2
Materials Research Laboratory, University of
California Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA
3
Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
Corresponding authors: farago@mrl.ucsb.edu, kantor@post.tau.ac.il
Received:
8
April
2002
Accepted:
12
July
2002
We compare Monte Carlo simulations of knotted and unknotted polymers
whose ends are connected to two parallel walls. The force f
exerted on the polymer is measured as a function of the separation
R between the walls. For unknotted polymers of several monomer
numbers N, the product 
is a simple function of 
,
where 
. By contrast, knotted polymers exhibit
strong finite-size effects which can be interpreted in terms of a
new length scale related to the size of the knot. Based on this
interpretation, we conclude that the number of monomers forming the
knot scales as Nt, with 
.
PACS: 36.20.Ey – Conformation (statistics and dynamics) / 87.15.La – Mechanical properties / 02.10.Kn – Knot theory
© EDP Sciences, 2002
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