Replica field theory for a polymer in random media

TL;DR

This paper develops a replica field theory for a polymer in a random medium, revealing how finite volume effects and disorder strength influence polymer collapse and stretching, with analytical results for different dimensions.

Contribution

It introduces a replica calculation with a confining potential to analytically study polymer behavior in finite volumes, extending previous models and highlighting the role of replica symmetry breaking.

Findings

Polymer always collapses in infinite volume.

Finite volume can induce a stretched-to-collapsed transition.

Replica symmetry breaking is essential for accurate results.

Abstract

In this paper we revisit the problem of a (non self-avoiding) polymer chain in a random medium which was previously investigated by Edwards and Muthukumar (EM). As noticed by Cates and Ball (CB) there is a discrepancy between the predictions of the replica calculation of EM and the expectation that in an infinite medium the quenched and annealed results should coincide (for a chain that is free to move) and a long polymer should always collapse. CB argued that only in a finite volume one might see a ``localization transition'' (or crossover) from a stretched to a collapsed chain in three spatial dimensions. Here we carry out the replica calculation in the presence of an additional confining harmonic potential that mimics the effect of a finite volume. Using a variational scheme with five variational parameters we derive analytically for d<4 the result R~(g |ln \mu|)^{-1/(4-d)} ~(g lnV)^{-1/(4-d)}, where R is the radius of gyration, g is the strength of the disorder, \mu is the spring constant associated with the confining potential and V is the associated effective volume of the system. Thus the EM result is recovered with their constant replaced by ln(V) as argued by CB. We see that in the strict infinite volume limit the polymer always collapses, but for finite volume a transition from a stretched to a collapsed form might be observed as a function of the strength of the disorder. For d<2 and for large V>V'~exp[g^(2/(2-d))L^((4-d)/(2-d))] the annealed results are recovered and R~(Lg)^(1/(d-2)), where L is the length of the polymer. Hence the polymer also collapses in the large L limit. The 1-step replica symmetry breaking solution is crucial for obtaining the above results.