Rowghanian Payam, Grosberg Alexander Y
Department of Physics, New York University, New York, New York, USA.
Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2012 Jul;86(1 Pt 1):011803. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.86.011803. Epub 2012 Jul 26.
We study the propagation of tension caused by an external force along a long polymeric molecule in two different settings, namely along a free polymer in three-dimensional (3D) space being pulled from one end, and along a prestretched circular polymer, confined in a narrow circular tube. We show that in both cases, the tension propagation is governed by a diffusion equation, and in particular, the tension front propagates as t(1/2) along the contour of the chain. The results are confirmed numerically, and by molecular dynamics simulations in the case of the 3D polymer. We also compare our results with the previously suggested ones for the translocation setting, and discuss why tension propagation is slower in that case.
我们研究了在两种不同情况下，外力沿长聚合物分子引起的张力传播，即沿三维（3D）空间中从一端被拉伸的自由聚合物，以及沿限制在狭窄圆管中的预拉伸圆形聚合物。我们表明，在这两种情况下，张力传播都由扩散方程控制，特别是张力前沿沿链的轮廓以t(1/2)的形式传播。数值结果以及三维聚合物情况下的分子动力学模拟证实了这些结果。我们还将我们的结果与之前针对转位情况提出的结果进行了比较，并讨论了为何在那种情况下张力传播较慢。
