Polymer Reptation in Disordered Media

TL;DR

This paper investigates how disorder and heterogeneity in the environment affect polymer reptation, revealing slower dynamics for heteropolymers and universality class characteristics of directed paths in random media.

Contribution

It introduces a disordered tube model to analyze polymer reptation, highlighting the impact of disorder on dynamics and universality class classification.

Findings

Heteropolymers exhibit significantly slower reptation dynamics than homopolymers.

The asymptotic behavior aligns with the universality class of directed paths in (1+1)-dimensional random media.

Disorder induces collective pinning effects that alter polymer motion.

Abstract

The effect of ambient disorders and sequence heterogeneities on the reptation of a long polymer is studied with the aid of a disordered tube model. The dynamics of a random heteropolymer is found to be much slower than that of a homopolymer due to collective pinning effects. The asymptotic properties belong to the universality class of a directed path in (1+1)-dimensional random media.