2000/01/01 by Glenn H. Fredrickson, Henri Orland, Laure Rialland
Chemical Engineering · Chemistry · Materials Science · Mathematics · Nursing · Physics and Astronomy · #Block Copolymer Self-Assembly #Chemistry #Clinical Nutrition and Gastroenterology #Field (mathematics) #Field theory (psychology) #Food composition and properties #Material Dynamics and Properties #Mathematical optimization #Mathematical physics #Mathematics #Mean field theory #Microbial Metabolites in Food Biotechnology #Physics #Pure mathematics #Quantum mechanics #Representation (politics) #Rheology and Fluid Dynamics Studies #Saddle #Saddle point #Statistical physics #cond-mat.soft #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.1063/1.4865911
openalex publication_date 2000/01/01 · arxiv created 2013/12/29 · arxiv updated 2015/06/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/02
We derive a general mean-field theory of inhomogeneous polymer dynamics; a theory whose form has been speculated and widely applied, but not heretofore derived. Our approach involves a functional integral representation of a Martin-Siggia-Rose (MSR) type description of the exact many-chain dynamics. A saddle point approximation to the generating functional, involving conditions where the MSR action is stationary with respect to a collective density field ρ and a conjugate MSR response field ϕ, produces the desired dynamical mean-field theory. Besides clarifying the proper structure of mean-field theory out of equilibrium, our results have implications for numerical studies of polymer dynamics involving hybrid particle-field simulation techniques such as the single-chain in mean-field method.