Transient helix formation in semiflexible polymers without confinement effects

Abstract

Generic interactions e.g. the Coulomb or other long ranged radially symmetric repulsive interactions between monomers of bead-spring model of a semi-flexible polymer induce instabilities in a initially straight polymer chain to form long lived helical structures. This mechanism can explain the spontaneous emergence of helices in stiff (bio-)polymers as effective charge of the chain increases. The helix formation is independent of the chemistry and torsional potentials are not used. So this method can be used to synthesize helical springs at length scales of nm-10$\mu$.

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