# Dynamic Looping of a Free-Draining Polymer

## TL;DR

This paper revisits and generalizes the Wilemski-Fixman theory for polymer looping times, introducing a perturbation approach that captures known results and reveals a new term, supported by numerical simulations.

## Contribution

A systematic perturbation method is developed to extend the WF theory, accommodating different sink types and revealing a previously unknown term in looping time expressions.

## Key findings

- Reproduces known analytical and asymptotic results for polymer looping.
- Identifies a new term in the analytical expression for looping time.
- Numerical simulations confirm the theoretical predictions.

## Abstract

We revisit the celebrated Wilemski-Fixman (WF) treatment for the looping time of a free-draining polymer. The WF theory introduces a sink term into the Fokker-Planck equation for the $3(N+1)$-dimensional Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process of the polymer dynamics, which accounts for the appropriate boundary condition due to the formation of a loop. The assumption for WF theory is considerably relaxed. A perturbation method approach is developed that justifies and generalizes the previous results using either a Delta sink or a Heaviside sink. For both types of sinks, we show that under the condition of a small dimensionless $\epsilon$, the ratio of capture radius to the Kuhn length, we are able to systematically produce all known analytical and asymptotic results obtained by other methods. This includes most notably the transition regime between the $N^2$ scaling of Doi, and $N\sqrt{N}/\epsilon$ scaling of Szabo, Schulten, and Schulten. The mathematical issue at play is the non-uniform convergence of $\epsilon\to 0$ and $N\to\infty$, the latter being an inherent part of the theory of a Gaussian polymer. Our analysis yields a novel term in the analytical expression for the looping time with small $\epsilon$, which is previously unknown. Monte Carlo numerical simulations corroborate the analytical findings. The systematic method developed here can be applied to other systems modeled by multi-dimensional Smoluchowski equations.