Universality of the deswelling of tangentially active polymer chains in dilute solutions
Abstract
Dilute solutions of linear polymer chains with tangentially active monomeric beads are simulated using a Brownian dynamics (BD) algorithm over a range of solvent quality in the thermal crossover regime between θ and athermal solvents. The conformational changes with increasing P{é}clet number (Pe) (which is proportional to the strength of activity) suggest deswelling of the chains resulting in a collapse of the radius of gyration data to a random walk (RW) statistics at a unique value of Pe, independent of the solvent quality. The swelling behaviour of active polymers in the crossover regime relative to their size at the θ state is found to follow the same universal characteristics as that of passive polymer chains. Furthermore, based on polymer blob theory we present a novel scaling of the thermal blob size with tangential activity of the monomeric beads which leads to the definition of a renormalized solvent quality parameter for active polymers. Altogether, this work establishes a connection between the configurational properties of active polymers and scaling laws in polymer physics, which provides a useful framework to study the dynamics of activity induced motion of polymeric molecules for various applications in biophysics and other related areas.
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BibTeX
@misc{tripathi2026universality,
title = {{Universality of the deswelling of tangentially active polymer chains in dilute solutions}},
author = {Suryansh Tripathi and Aritra Santra},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2608.11972},
eprint = {2608.11972},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.11972},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Universality of the deswelling of tangentially active polymer chains in dilute solutions
AU - Suryansh Tripathi
AU - Aritra Santra
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/16
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2608.11972
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.11972
AB - Dilute solutions of linear polymer chains with tangentially active monomeric beads are simulated using a Brownian dynamics (BD) algorithm over a range of solvent quality in the thermal crossover regime between θ and athermal solvents. The conformational changes with increasing P{é}clet number (Pe) (which is proportional to the strength of activity) suggest deswelling of the chains resulting in a collapse of the radius of gyration data to a random walk (RW) statistics at a unique value of Pe, independent of the solvent quality. The swelling behaviour of active polymers in the crossover regime relative to their size at the θ state is found to follow the same universal characteristics as that of passive polymer chains. Furthermore, based on polymer blob theory we present a novel scaling of the thermal blob size with tangential activity of the monomeric beads which leads to the definition of a renormalized solvent quality parameter for active polymers. Altogether, this work establishes a connection between the configurational properties of active polymers and scaling laws in polymer physics, which provides a useful framework to study the dynamics of activity induced motion of polymeric molecules for various applications in biophysics and other related areas.
ER -