2015/03/18 by Bing-Sui Lu, Ali Naji, Rudolf Podgornik
Chemistry · Engineering · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Chemical physics #Chemistry #Dipole #Interaction energy #Materials science #Mathematics #Molecule #Nanopore and Nanochannel Transport Studies #Organic chemistry #Polarizability #Polymer #Quantum, superfluid, helium dynamics #Scaling #Sequence (biology) #Spectroscopy and Quantum Chemical Studies #cond-mat.dis-nn #cond-mat.soft #cond-mat.stat-mech #physics.bio-ph #physics.chem-ph #van der Waals force
paper · pdf · doi:10.1063/1.4921892
published as J. Chem. Phys. 142, 214904 (2015) · 16 pages, 5 figures
arxiv created 2015/03/18 · openalex publication_date 2015/06/03 · arxiv updated 2020/10/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We analyze van der Waals interactions between two rigid polymers with sequence-specific, anisotropic polarizabilities along the polymer backbones, so that the dipole moments fluctuate parallel to the polymer backbones. Assuming that each polymer has a quenched-in polarizability sequence which reflects, for example, the polynucleotide sequence of a double-stranded DNA molecule, we study the van der Waals interaction energy between a pair of such polymers with rod-like structure for the cases where their respective polarizability sequences are (i) distinct and (ii) identical, with both zero and non-zero correlation length of the polarizability correlator along the polymer backbones in the latter case. For identical polymers, we find a novel r(-5) scaling behavior of the van der Waals interaction energy for small inter-polymer separation r, in contradistinction to the r(-4) scaling behavior of distinct polymers, with furthermore a pronounced angular dependence favoring attraction between sufficiently aligned identical polymers. Such behavior can assist the molecular recognition between polymers.