Application of the Theory of Absorbing Markov Chains to the Statistical Thermodynamics of Polymer Chains in a Lattice

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Abstract
A concept of absorbing Markov processes is employed in order to study the statistical thermodynamics of infinitely long polymer chains, simulated by a random flight on a lattice. These polymer chains interact in the sense that certain chain conformations are associated with intramolecular interactions, defined by short‐range, steplike potentials. Various thermodynamic functions are derived from the polymer partition function, which, in turn, is obtained from the largest eigenvalue of the matrix of transition probabilities. The thermodynamic functions of this simplified polymer model are evaluated for some lattice models and for different forms of the interaction potentials. The results thus obtained are then compared with more accurate, but much more lengthy, Monte Carlo or direct‐counting computations.