Long-Lived Self-Entanglements in Ring Polymers
Name
PhysRevLett.123.048002.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
2.54 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
c9d9e7a147ac0c30d5493bde9d642d9a
Author(s)
Soh, Beatrice W
Klotz, Alexander R
Robertson-Anderson, Rae M
Doyle, Patrick S
Date Issued
2019
Journal
Physical Review Letters
Publisher
American Physical Society (APS)
Version
Final published version
Abstract
© 2019 American Physical Society. The entanglement of ring polymers remains mysterious in many aspects. In this Letter, we use electric fields to induce self-entanglements in circular DNA molecules, which serve as a minimal system for studying chain entanglements. We show that self-threadings give rise to entanglements in ring polymers and can slow down polymer dynamics significantly. We find that strongly entangled circular molecules remain kinetically arrested in a compact state for very long times, thereby providing experimental evidence for the severe topological constraints imposed by threadings.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Chemical Engineering
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.048002
