Existence and interpretation of too high excluded volume exponents in the apparent scaling laws for polymer dimensions in a poor solvent

Abstract
It is shown that if the transition from a gaussian to an excluded volume statistics takes place progressively starting from a number of links Nc, some quantities such as the radius of gyration or the scattering curve scale with effective exponents higher than the asymptotical excluded volume exponent for 10 Nc < N < 100 Nc. This model could in particular explain the results observed with the polyacrylamide-water system, where Nc is large at room temperature