Metastable tight knots in a worm-like polymer
arXiv:cond-mat/0702160 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.99.217801
Abstract
Based on an estimate of the knot entropy of a worm-like chain we predict that the interplay of bending energy and confinement entropy will result in a compact metastable configuration of the knot that will diffuse, without spreading, along the contour of the semi-flexible polymer until it reaches one of the chain ends. Our estimate of the size of the knot as a function of its topological invariant (ideal aspect ratio) agrees with recent experimental results of knotted dsDNA. Further experimental tests of our ideas are proposed.
4 pages, 3 figures
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Cited by in corpus (17)
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