Regensburg 2007 – scientific programme

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 16: Poster Session I

BP 16.33: Poster

Tuesday, March 27, 2007, 17:00–19:30, Poster D

Persistence length of semiflexible polymers and bending rigidity renormalization — •Petra Gutjahr, Reinhard Lipowsky, and Jan Kierfeld — Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Science Park Golm, 14424 Potsdam, Germany

The persistence length of semiflexible polymers and one-dimensional fluid membranes is obtained from the renormalization of their bending rigidity. The renormalized bending rigidity is calculated using an exact real-space functional renormalization group transformation based on a mapping to the one-dimensional Heisenberg model. The renormalized bending rigidity vanishes exponentially at large length scales and its asymptotic behaviour is used to define the persistence length. For semiflexible polymers, our results agree with definitions based on the asymptotic behaviour of tangent correlation functions. Our definition differs from the one commonly used for fluid membranes, which is based on a perturbative renormalization of the bending rigidity.