Stretching helical nano-springs at finite temperature

Abstract

Using dynamic simulations and analytic methods, we study the elastic response of a helical filament subject to uniaxial tension over a wide range of bend and twist persistence length. A low-pitch helix at low temperatures exhibits a stretching instability and the force-extension curve consists of a sequence of spikes. At elevated temperature (i.e. small persistence lengths) the helix melts and a pronounced force plateau is obtained in the fixed-extension ensemble. The torque boundary condition significantly affects the resulting elastic properties.

References in corpus (4)

• Single-molecule experiments in biological physics: methods and applications
• Fluctuating Filaments I: Statistical Mechanics of Helices
• Stretching Instability of Helical Spring
• Writhing Geometry of Open DNA

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• A symplectic integration method for elastic filaments