Individual entanglements in a simulated polymer melt,

E. Ben-Naim, G.S. Grest, T.A. Witten, A.R.C. Bajlon

We examine entanglements using monomer contacts between pairs of chains in a Brownian-dynamics simulation of a polymer melt. A map of contact positions with respect to the contacting monomer numbers (i, j) shows clustering in small regions of (i, j) which persists in time, as expected for entanglements. Using the ``space''-time correlation function of the aforementioned contacts, we show that a pair of entangled chains exhibits a qualitatively different behavior than a pair of distant chains when brought together. Quantitatively, about 50% of the contacts between entangled chains are persistent contacts not present in independently moving chains. In addition, we account for several observed scaling properties of the contact correlation function


Space time representation of the contact map of two entangled chains (left) and two unentangled chains (right) during the simulation. The horizontal axis represents monomer index i. Monomer index j is color-coded: foreground is blue, background is red. The vertical axis is time.


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