Electronic Resource
College Park, Md.
:
American Institute of Physics (AIP)
The Journal of Chemical Physics
106 (1997), S. 4243-4247
ISSN:
1089-7690
Source:
AIP Digital Archive
Topics:
Physics
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
Notes:
A functional integral formalism is used to derive the extension of a stiff chain subject to an external force. The force versus extension curves are calculated using a mean-field approach in which the hard constraint u2(s)=1 is replaced by a global constraint 〈u2(s)〉=1 where u(s) is the tangent vector describing the chain and s is the arclength. The theory quantitatively reproduces the experimental results for DNA that is subject to a constant force. We also treat the problems of semiflexible chain in a nematic field. In the limit of weak nematic field strength our treatment reproduces the exact results for chain expansion parallel to the director. When the strength of the nematic field is large, a situation in which there are two equivalent minima in the free energy, the intrinsically mean-field approach yields incorrect results for the dependence of the persistence length on the nematic field. © 1997 American Institute of Physics.
Type of Medium:
Electronic Resource
URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.473128
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