Anomalous bending of a polyelectrolyte
arXiv:cond-mat/0208178 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevE.67.061805
Abstract
We report on a study of the shape of a stiff, charged rod that is subjected to equal and opposite force couples at its two ends. Unlike a neutral elastic rod, which forms a constant curvature configuration under such influences, the charged rod tends to flatten in the interior and accumulate the curvature in the end points, to maximally reduce the electrostatic self-repulsion. The effect of this nonuniform bending on the effective elasticity and on the statistical conformations of a fluctuating charged rod is discussed. An alternative definition for the electrostatic persistence length is suggested. This new definition is found to be consistent with a corresponding length that can be deduced from the end-to-end distribution function of a fluctuating polyelectrolyte.
RevTeX 4, 10 pages, 11 eps figures
References in corpus (4)
- The Persistence Length of a Strongly Charged, Rod-like, Polyelectrolyte in the Presence of Salt
- Conformational Instability of Rodlike Polyelectrolytes due to Counterion Fluctuations
- Probing Polyelectrolyte Elasticity Using Radial Distribution Function
- Radial Distribution Function of Rodlike Polyelectrolytes