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Small-world networks and the conformation space of a lattice polymer chain

A. Scala·L. A. N. Amaral·M. Barthelemy
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Abstract

We map the conformation space of a simple lattice polymer chain to a network, where (i) the vertices of the network have a one-to-one correspondence to the conformations of the chain, and (ii) a link between two vertices indicates the possibility of switching from one conformation to the other by a single Monte Carlo move of the chain. We find that the geometric properties of this network are similar to those of small-world networks, namely, the diameter of conformation space increases, for large networks, as the logarithm of the number of conformations, while locally the network appears to have low dimensionality.

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A. Scala, L. A. N. Amaral, M. Barthelemy. 2000-04-21. Small-world networks and the conformation space of a lattice polymer chain. https://doi.org/10.1209/epl%2Fi2001-00457-7

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