POLYMER DYNAMICS: FROM SIMPLE TO COMPLEX

Mikhail Tamm (Personal webpage)

This talk is aiming to give an overview of classical polymer dynamics theory with discussion of some important recent developments.

The subject dates back to the 1940s when the celebrated Rouse model (a set of beads connected with springs and subject to independent thermal noise at each bead) was proposed. This model is very beautiful and has many important applications, but it is unable to catch some of the effects which might be crucially important for the polymer dynamics both in solutions and in melts. Most important of these effects being hydrodynamic interactions in case of diluted solutions and topological constraints imposed on a chain by the surrounding chains in case of melts and concentrated solutions. In order to address this second problem the reptation theory was developed in the 1970s.

Now, both Rouse and reptation models work for polymer states where chains at equilibrium are Gaussian, for reptation model it is also crucial that chains are linear. In the second part of my talk I will address generalizations of these models recently suggested for more exotic non-Gaussian polymer states, in particular the states where polymer conformations are controlled by strong topological interactions, e.g. the so-called crumpled globule and melts on non-concatenating polymer rings.