2001/08/31 by Florent Krząkała, F. Krzakala, Marc Mézard +3 · 2 citations
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Physics and Astronomy · #DNA and Nucleic Acid Chemistry #Protein Structure and Dynamics #RNA and protein synthesis mechanisms #cond-mat.dis-nn #cond-mat.stat-mech #q-bio.BM
paper · pdf · doi:10.1209/epl/i2002-00527-x
published as Europhys. Lett., 57 (5), pp. 752-758 (2002) · 7 pages, 1 figure
openalex publication_date 2002/03/01 · arxiv created 2002/03/04 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
We characterize the low-temperature phase of a simple model for RNA secondary structures by determining the typical energy scale E ( l ) of excitations involving l bases. At low enough temperatures, including T = 0, we find a scaling law E ( l ) ∼ l θ with a small exponent θ. Above a critical temperature, there is a different phase characterized by a relatively flat free-energy landscape resembling that of a homopolymer with a scaling exponent θ = 1. These results strengthen the evidence in favour of the existence of a glass phase at low temperatures.