Long-Lived Self-Entanglements in Ring Polymers
© 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 r...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
American Physical Society (APS)
2021
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/134641 |
| Summary: | © 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. |
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