Entanglements in random systems

Yacov Kantor*, Gregory N. Hassold

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1 Scopus citations

Abstract

Topological entanglements play an important role in the physical properties, such as viscosity, of macromolecular structures. We investigate the likelihood of the appearance of entanglements in the bond percolation problem. We show that below the percolation threshold pc (but extremely close to it) there exists an entanglement threshold pe. Between pe and pc, there exists an infinite spanning group of interlocked (linked) clusters. Thus, in a strong gelation process, the sol-gel transition appears at pe rather than at pc. We define the problem and discuss the possible approaches to its resolution. We apply the Monte Carlo renormalization-group approach to find the distance between the thresholds, and investigate some numerical characteristics of the entangled clusters. The achieved numerical resolution of pc-p2.3×10-7 required averaging over an extremely large numbers of configurations.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)5334-5341
Number of pages8
JournalPhysical Review A
Volume40
Issue number9
DOIs
StatePublished - 1989

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