Friday, October 12, 2012

1210.3228 (Daniel Svenšek et al.)

Confined chiral polymer nematics: ordering and spontaneous condensation    [PDF]

Daniel Svenšek, Rudolf Podgornik
We investigate condensation of a long confined chiral nematic polymer inside a spherical enclosure, mimicking condensation of DNA inside a viral capsid. The Landau-de Gennes nematic free energy {\sl Ansatz} appropriate for nematic polymers allows us to study the condensation process in detail with different boundary conditions at the enclosing wall that simulate repulsive and attractive polymer-surface interactions. Increasing the chirality, we observe a transformation of the toroidal condensate into a closed surface with an increasing genus, akin to the ordered domain formation observed in cryo-microscopy of bacteriophages.
View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1210.3228

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