Journal
JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL PHYSICS
Volume 141, Issue 4, Pages -Publisher
AMER INST PHYSICS
DOI: 10.1063/1.4891095
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Funding
- ERC [267499]
- DFG [SPP 1726]
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The equilibrium structure and dynamics of a single polymer chain in a thermal solvent is by now well-understood in terms of scaling laws. Here, we consider a polymer in a bacterial bath, i.e., in a solvent consisting of active particles which bring in nonequilibrium fluctuations. Using computer simulations of a self-avoiding polymer chain in two dimensions which is exposed to a dilute bath of active particles, we show that the Flory-scaling exponent is unaffected by the bath activity provided the chain is very long. Conversely, for shorter chains, there is a nontrivial coupling between the bacteria intruding into the chain which may stiffen and expand the chain in a nonuniversal way. As a function of the molecular weight, the swelling first scales faster than described by the Flory exponent, then an unusual plateau-like behaviour is reached and finally a crossover to the universal Flory behaviour is observed. As a function of bacterial activity, the chain end-to-end distance exhibits a pronounced non-monotonicity. Moreover, the mean-square displacement of the center of mass of the chain shows a ballistic behaviour at intermediate times as induced by the active solvent. Our predictions are verifiable in two-dimensional bacterial suspensions and for colloidal model chains exposed to artificial colloidal microswimmers. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.
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