Computer simulations of randomly branching polymers: annealed versus quenched branching structures

DOI10.1088/1751-8113/49/34/345001MaRDI QIDQ2822111zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Angelo Rosa, Ralf Everaers

Publication date 27 September 2016

Published in Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.03000

zbMATH Keywords

branched polymerscomputer simulationsexcluded volumeFlory theorylattice trees

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Lattice systems (Ising, dimer, Potts, etc.) and systems on graphs arising in equilibrium statistical mechanics (82B20) Critical phenomena in equilibrium statistical mechanics (82B27) Statistical mechanics of polymers (82D60)

Abstract: We present computer simulations of three systems of randomly branching polymers in d=3 dimensions: ideal trees and self-avoiding trees with annealed and quenched connectivities. In all cases, we performed a detailed analysis of trees connectivities, spatial conformations and statistical properties of linear paths on trees, and compare the results to the corresponding predictions of Flory theory. We confirm that, overall, the theory predicts correctly that trees with quenched ideal connectivity exhibit {it less} overall swelling in good solvent than corresponding trees with annealed connectivity even though they are more strongly stretched on the path level. At the same time, we emphasize the inadequacy of the Flory theory in predicting the behaviour of other, and equally relevant, observables like contact probabilities between tree nodes. We show, then, that contact probabilities can be aptly characterized by introducing a novel critical exponent, $het{a}_{path}$, which accounts for how they decay as a function of the node-to-node path distance on the tree.

Review text

The paper deals with the simulation of randomly branched polymers with repulsive, short-range interactions between monomers. One first provides some necessary background and definitions on the considered model and then one discusses carefully annealed connectivity, quenched connectivity and randomly quenched connectivity. Then one describes an algorithm to simulate trees with these various types of connectivity in the analysis of branched polymers. As the main contribution of the paper, one provides results about the structure of trees for various statistical ensembles, as well as the critical exponents which characterizes the behaviour of the tree for large-dimensional systems.

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Cited in

(1)

• Efficiency of the incomplete enumeration algorithm for Monte-Carlo simulation of linear and branched polymers

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