Interacting semi-flexible self-avoiding walks studied on a fractal lattice

TL;DR

This study models semi-flexible self-avoiding walks on a fractal lattice to understand polymer conformations, revealing universal critical behavior and how stiffness influences local properties like contacts and persistence length.

Contribution

It provides exact recurrence equations for the model on a fractal lattice, demonstrating universal critical exponents and analyzing local properties related to polymer stiffness and interactions.

Findings

Polymer resides in an expanded phase at all finite energies and temperatures.

Universal critical exponents match those of ordinary self-avoiding walks.

Increased stiffness reduces contacts and increases persistence length.

Abstract

Self-avoiding walks are studied on the 3-simplex fractal lattice as a model of linear polymer conformations in a dilute, non-homogeneous solution. A model is supplemented with bending energies and attractive-interaction energies between non-consecutively visited pairs of nearest-neighboring sites (contacts). It captures the main features of a semi-flexible polymer subjected to variable solvent conditions. Hierarchical structure of the fractal lattice enabled determination of the exact recurrence equations for the generating function, through which universal and local properties of the model were studied. Analysis of the recurrence equations showed that for all finite values of the considered energies and non-zero temperatures, polymer resides in an expanded phase. Critical exponents of the expanded phase are universal and the same as those for ordinary self-avoiding walks on the same lattice found earlier. As a measure of local properties, the mean number of contacts per mean number of steps as well as persistence length, are calculated as functions of Boltzmann weights associated with bending energies and attractive interactions between contacts. Both quantities are monotonic functions of stiffness weights for fixed interaction, and in the limit of infinite stiffness the number of contacts decreases to zero, while the persistence length increases unboundedly.