Understanding nonequilibrium scaling laws governing collapse of a polymer

TL;DR

This paper reviews and presents new data on the nonequilibrium scaling laws governing homopolymer collapse dynamics, emphasizing coarsening and aging phenomena in three and two dimensions.

Contribution

It offers an overview of current simulation approaches and introduces new preliminary results for polymer collapse in two dimensions.

Findings

Scaling laws for coarsening during collapse in 3D

Aging behavior observed in polymer dynamics

Preliminary data for 2D collapse dynamics

Abstract

Recent emerging interest in experiments of single-polymer dynamics urge computational physicists to revive their understandings, particularly in the nonequilibrium context. Here we briefly discuss the currently evolving approaches of investigating the evolution dynamics of homopolymer collapse in computer simulations. Primary focus of these approaches is to understand various dynamic scaling laws related to coarsening and aging during the collapse in space dimension $d=3$, using tools popular in nonequilibrium coarsening dynamics of particle or spin systems. In addition to providing an overview of those results, we also present new preliminary data for $d=2$.