2015/10/26 by Eduardo Dagrosa, Dagrosa, Eduardo, Aleksander L Owczarek +3
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) #Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) #cond-mat.soft #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1510.07558
19 Pages, 9 figures
arxiv created 2016/10/27 · arxiv updated 2016/10/28
Recently it has been argued that weighting the writhe of unknotted self-avoiding polygons can be related to possible experiments that turn double stranded DNA. We first solve exactly a directed model and demonstrate that in such a subset of polygons the problem of weighting their writhe is associated with a phase transition. We then analyse simulations using the Wang-Landau algorithm to observe scaling in the fluctuations of the writhe that is compatible with a second-order phase transition in a undirected self-avoiding polygon model. Crucially, we conclude that the transition becomes apparent when the polygon is stretched sufficiently with a pulling force.