Configuration Dynamics of a Flexible Polymer Chain in a Bath of Chiral Active Particles

TL;DR

This study explores how a flexible polymer chain's configuration in a chiral active particle bath depends on propulsion and rotation, revealing non-monotonic gyration radius behavior and formation of rings due to competing effects.

Contribution

It uncovers the complex effects of chiral active baths on polymer configurations, including non-monotonic size changes and ring formation, which are novel insights into active matter-polymer interactions.

Findings

Polymer collapses then swells with increasing propulsion in chiral baths.

Polymer can form closed rings at large enough chain lengths.

Gyration radius exhibits non-monotonic dependence on propulsion velocity.

Abstract

We investigate configuration dynamics of a flexible polymer chain in a bath of active particles with dynamic chirality, i.e., particles rotate with a deterministic angular velocity $\omega$ besides self-propulsion,by Langevin dynamics simulations in two dimensional space. Particular attentions are paid to how the gyration radius $R_{g}$ changes with the propulsion velocity $v_{0}$,angular velocity $\omega$ and chain length. We find that in a chiral bath with a typical nonzero $\omega$, the chain first collapses into a small compact cluster and swells again with increasing $v_{0}$, in quite contrast to the case for a normal achiral bath $(\omega=0)$ wherein a flexible chain swells with increasing $v_{0}$. More interestingly, the polymer can even form a closed ring if the chain length is large enough,which may oscillate with the cluster if $v_{0}$ is large. Consequently, the gyration radius $R_{g}$ shows nontrivial non-monotonic dependences on $v_{0}$, i.e., it undergoes a minimum for relatively short chains, and two minima with a maximum in between for longer chains. Our analysis shows that such interesting phenomena are mainly due to the competition between two roles played by the chiral active bath: while the persistence motion due to particle activity tends to stretch the chain, the circular motion of the particle may lead to an effective osmotic pressure that tends to collapse the chain. In addition, the size of the circular motion $R_{0}=v_{0}/\omega$ shows an important role in that the compact clusters and closed-rings are both observed at nearly the same values of $R_{0}$ for different $\omega$.