Regensburg 2010 – scientific programme

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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 7: Stochastic processes, brownian motion, and transport

DY 7.11: Talk

Tuesday, March 23, 2010, 12:15–12:30, H46

Thermally activated fragmentation in a simple polymer model — •Simon Fugmann and Igor M. Sokolov — Institut für Physik, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Newtonstraße 15, 12489 Berlin, Germany

We consider the thermally activated fragmentation of a homopolymer chain. In our simple model the dynamics of the intact chain is a Rouse one until a bond breaks and bond breakdown is considered as a first passage problem over a barrier to an absorbing boundary. Using the framework of the Wilemski-Fixman approximation we calculate activation times of individual bonds for free and grafted chains. We show that these times crucially depend on the length of the chain and the location of the bond yielding a minimum at the free chain ends. Based on these results we discus the effect of spacer molecules in polymer rupture experiments performed at a constant loading rate.