2007/05/31 by Klaus Kroy, K. Kroy, J. Glaser +1 · 1 citation
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Biocrusts and Microbial Ecology #Cellular Mechanics and Interactions #Material Dynamics and Properties #cond-mat.soft
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1367-2630/9/11/416
published as New J. Phys. 9:416 (2007) · 12 pages, 8 figures. Minor corrections
arxiv created 2007/07/30 · openalex publication_date 2007/11/30 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We introduce a new model for the dynamics of a wormlike chain in an environment that gives rise to a rough free energy landscape, which we baptise the glassy wormlike chain. It is obtained from the common wormlike chain by an exponential stretching of the relaxation spectrum of its long-wavelength eigenmodes, controlled by a single stretching parameter. Predictions for pertinent observables such as the dynamic structure factor and the microrheological susceptibility exhibit the characteristics of soft glassy rheology and compare favourably with experimental data for reconstituted cytoskeletal networks and live cells. We speculate about the possible microscopic origin of the stretching, implications for the nonlinear rheology, and the potential physiological significance of our results.