Monte Carlo study of polymers in equilibrium with random obstacles

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
We have performed Monte Carlo calculations for two‐dimensional freely jointed polymers with no excluded volume in equilibrium with a quenched random lattice of obstacles. In addition to the obstacle density, there are two microscopic parameters in the problem: the obstacle side length a and the polymer step length l. Our Monte Carlo calculations extend to N=50 000 monomerpolymer units. The calculations begin to exhibit standard Flory–Lifshitz scaling only at extremely large values of N. For example, when l≊a, nonuniversal behavior is found for N<104. For some choices of parameters, this behavior includes a nonmonotonic mean‐square end‐to‐end length R 2 as a function of N. These calculations are made feasible by exploiting an equivalence between annealed and quenched disorder valid when the polymer may equilibrate to the quenched material.

This publication has 23 references indexed in Scilit: