Regensburg 2007 – scientific programme
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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 6: Biopolymer Conformation and Dynamics
BP 6.4: Talk
Monday, March 26, 2007, 15:15–15:30, H44
Fluctuating polymer rings — •Karen Winkler and Erwin Frey — Arnold Sommerfeld Center for Theoretical Physics and CeNS, Department of Physics, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Theresienstr. 37, D-80333 München, Germany
Geometric constraints have been proven to induce interesting behavior on polymers. We consider polymer bundles confined to a ring-like structure. This constraint causes an additional bending stiffness and coupling of bending and twisting modes. To describe polymer bundles we derived an analytic model for a semiflexible polymer ring with anisotropic bending stiffness and twist stiffness. This model predicts the mean square diameter of a ribbonlike ring thus giving a novel parameter to determine bending and twist stiffnesses of polymer bundles in experiments.
Furthermore the asymmetric shape of polymer rings with symmetric cross section is investigated over the whole range of flexibility by Monte Carlo simulations. For semiflexible polymers a scaling argument explains the change of the polymer’s asphericity with increasing flexibility.