arXiv subjects

A L Owczarek

Publications and source records attributed to A L Owczarek.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

Self-avoiding walks pulled at an angle

We investigate polymers pulled away from an interacting surface, where the force is applied to the untethered endpoint and at an angle $θ$ to the surface. We use the canonical self-avoiding walk model of polymers and obtain the phase diagram of the model using Monte Carlo simulations for a range of angles, temperatures and force magnitudes. The phase diagram of the model displays re-entrance at low temperatures for three-dimensional walks when the pulling is more vertical than horizontal. Our results agree with various exactly solvable lattice models that have been previously studied.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2025

Compressed self-avoiding walks in two and three dimensions

We consider the phase transition induced by compressing a self-avoiding walk in a slab where the walk is attached to both walls of the slab in two and three dimensions, and the resulting phase once the polymer is compressed. The process of moving between a stretched situation where the walls pull apart to a compressed scenario is a phase transition with some similarities to that induced by pulling and pushing the end of the polymer. However, there are key differences in that the compressed state is expected to behave like a lower dimensional system, which is not the case when the force pushes only on the endpoint of the polymer. We use scaling arguments to predict the exponents both of those associated with the phase transition and those in the compressed state and find good agreement with Monte Carlo simulations.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2024

Lattice polymers near a permeable interface

We study the localisation of lattice polymer models near a permeable interface in two dimensions. Localisation can arise due to an interaction between the polymer and the interface, and can be altered by a preference for the bulk solvent on one side or by the application of a force to manipulate the polymer. Different combinations of these three effects give slightly different statistical mechanical behaviours. The canonical lattice model of polymers is the self-avoiding walk which we mainly study with Monte Carlo simulation to calculate the phase diagram and critical phenomena. For comparison, a solvable directed walk version is also defined and the phase diagrams are compared for each case. We find broad agreement between the two models, and most minor differences can be understood as due to the different entropic contributions. In the limit where the bulk solvent on one side is overwhelmingly preferred we see how the localisation transition transforms to the adsorption transition; the permeable interface becomes effectively an impermeable surface.

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arXiv2020

Effect of lattice inhomogeneity on collapsed phases of semi-stiff ISAW polymers

We investigate semi-stiff interacting self-avoiding walks on the square lattice with random impurities. The walks are simulated using the flatPERM algorithm and the inhomogeneity is realised as a random fraction of the lattice that is unavailable to the walks. We calculate several thermodynamic and metric quantities to map out the phase diagram and look at how the amount of disorder affects the properties of each phase. On a homogeneous lattice this model has an extended phase and two distinct collapsed phases, globular and crystalline, which differ in the anisotropy of the walks. By adding impurities to the lattice we notice a degree of swelling of the walks for all phases that is commensurate with the fraction of the lattice that is removed. Importantly, the crystal phase disappears with the addition of impurities for sufficiently long walks. For finite length walks we demonstrate that competition between the size of the average spaces free of impurities and the size of the collapsed polymer describes the crossover between the homogeneous lattice and the impurity dominated situation.

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arXiv2019

Adsorbed self-avoiding walks pulled at an interior vertex

We consider self-avoiding walks terminally attached to a surface at which they can adsorb. A force is applied, normal to the surface, to desorb the walk and we investigate how the behaviour depends on the vertex of the walk at which the force is applied. We use rigorous arguments to map out some features of the phase diagram, including bounds on the locations of some phase boundaries, and we use Monte Carlo methods to make quantitative predictions about the locations of these boundaries and the nature of the various phase transitions.

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arXiv2019

Monte Carlo simulation of 3-star lattice polymers pulled from an adsorbing surface

We study uniform 3-star polymers with one branch tethered to an attractive surface and another branch pulled by a force away from the surface. Each branch of the 3-star lattice is modelled as a self-avoiding walk on the simple cubic lattice with one endpoint of each branch joined at a common node. Recent theoretical work (Ref.~1) found four phases for this system: free, fully adsorbed, ballistic and mixed. The mixed phase occurs between the ballistic and fully adsorbed phase. We investigate this system by using the flatPERM Monte Carlo algorithm with special restrictions on the endpoint moves to simulate 3-stars up to branch length 128. We provide numerical evidence of the four phases and in particular that the ballistic-mixed and adsorbed-mixed phase boundaries are first-order transitions. The position of the ballistic-mixed and adsorbed-mixed boundaries are found at the expected location in the asymptotic regime of large force and large surface-monomer interaction energy. These results indicate that the flatPERM algorithm is suitable for simulating star lattice polymers and opens up new avenues for numerical study of non-linear lattice polymers.

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arXiv2019

Phase transitions in solvent dependent polymer adsorption in three dimensions

We consider the phase diagram of self-avoiding walks (SAW) on the simple cubic lattice subject to surface and bulk interactions, modeling an adsorbing surface and variable solvent quality for a polymer in dilute solution, respectively. We simulate SAWs at specific interaction strengths to focus on locating certain transitions and their critical behavior. By collating these new results with previous results we sketch the complete phase diagram and show how the adsorption transition is affected by changing the bulk interaction strength. This expands on recent work considering how adsorption is affected by solvent quality. We demonstrate that changes in the adsorption crossover exponent coincide with phase boundaries.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2019

Force-induced desorption of 3-star polymers in two dimensions

We investigate the phase diagram of a self-avoiding walk model of a 3-star polymer in two dimensions, adsorbing at a surface and being desorbed by the action of a force. We show rigorously that there are four phases: a free phase, a ballistic phase, an adsorbed phase and a mixed phase where part of the 3-star is adsorbed and part is ballistic. We use both rigorous arguments and Monte Carlo methods to map out the phase diagram, and investigate the location and nature of the phase transition boundaries. In two dimensions, only two of the arms can be fully adsorbed in the surface and this alters the phase diagram when compared to 3-stars in three dimensions.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2019

Adsorption of interacting self-avoiding trails in two dimensions

We investigate the surface adsorption transition of interacting self-avoiding square lattice trails onto a straight boundary line. The character of this adsorption transition depends on the strength of the bulk interaction, which induces a collapse transition of the trails from a swollen to a collapsed phase, separated by a critical state. If the trail is in the critical state, the universality class of the adsorption transition changes; this is known as the special adsorption point. Using flatPERM, a stochastic growth Monte Carlo algorithm, we simulate the adsorption of self-avoiding interacting trails on the square lattice using three different boundary scenarios which differ with respect to the orientation of the boundary and the type of surface interaction. We confirm the expected phase diagram, showing swollen, collapsed, and adsorbed phases in all three scenarios, and confirm universality of the normal adsorption transition at low values of the bulk interaction strength. Intriguingly, we cannot confirm universality of the special adsorption transition. We find different values for the exponents; the most likely explanation is that this is due to the presence of strong corrections to scaling at this point.

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arXiv2017

Anomalous polymer collapse winding angle distributions

In two dimensions polymer collapse has been shown to be complex with multiple low temperature states and multi-critical points. Recently, strong numerical evidence has been provided for a long-standing prediction of universal scaling of winding angle distributions, where simulations of interacting self-avoiding walks show that the winding angle distribution for N-step walks is compatible with the theoretical prediction of a Gaussian with a variance growing asymptotically as C log N . Here we extend this work by considering interacting self-avoiding trails which are believed to be a model representative of some of the more complex behaviour. We provide robust evidence that, while the high temperature swollen state of this model has a winding angle distribution that is also Gaussian, this breaks down at the polymer collapse point and at low temperatures. Moreover, we provide some evidence that the distributions are well modelled by stretched/compressed exponentials, in contradistinction to the behaviour found in interacting self-avoiding walks.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2016

Self-attracting polymers in two dimensions with three low-temperature phases

We study via Monte Carlo simulation a generalisation of the so-called vertex interacting self-avoiding walk (VISAW) model on the square lattice. The configurations are actually not self-avoiding walks but rather restricted self-avoiding trails (bond avoiding paths) which may visit a site of the lattice twice provided the path does not cross itself: to distinguish this subset of trails we shall call these configurations \emph{grooves}. Three distinct interactions are added to the configurations: firstly the VISAW interaction, which is associated with doubly visited sites, secondly a nearest neighbour interaction in the same fashion as the canonical interacting self-avoiding walk (ISAW) and thirdly, a stiffness energy to enhance or decrease the probability of bends in the configuration. In addition to the normal high temperature phase we find three low temperature phases: (i) the usual amorphous liquid drop-like "globular" phase, (ii) an anisotropic "$β$-sheet" phase with dominant configurations consisting of aligned long straight segments, which has been found in semi-flexible nearest neighbour ISAW models, and (iii) a maximally dense phase, where the all sites of the path are associated with doubly visited sites (except those of the boundary of the configuration), previously observed in interacting self-avoiding trails. We construct a phase diagram using the fluctuations of the energy parameters and three order parameters. The $β$-sheet and maximally dense phases do not seem to meet in the phase space and are always separated by either the extended or globular phases. We focus attention on the transition between the extended and maximally dense phases, as that is the transition in the original VISAW model. We find that for the path lengths considered there is a range of parameters where the transition is first order and it is otherwise continuous.

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arXiv2015

The role of three-body interactions in two-dimensional polymer collapse

Various interacting lattice path models of polymer collapse in two dimensions demonstrate different critical behaviours. This difference has been without a clear explanation. The collapse transition has been variously seen to be in the Duplantier-Saleur $θ$-point university class (specific heat cusp), the interacting trail class (specific heat divergence) or even first-order. Here we study via Monte Carlo simulation a generalisation of the Duplantier-Saleur model on the honeycomb lattice and also a generalisation of the so-called vertex-interacting self-avoiding walk model (configurations are actually restricted trails known as grooves) on the triangular lattice. Crucially for both models we have three and two body interactions explicitly and differentially weighted. We show that both models have similar phase diagrams when considered in these larger two-parameter spaces. They demonstrate regions for which the collapse transition is first-order for high three body interactions and regions where the collapse is in the Duplantier-Saleur $θ$-point university class. We conjecture a higher order multiple critical point separating these two types of collapse.

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arXiv2015

An exact solution of three interacting friendly walks in the bulk

We find the exact solution of three interacting friendly directed walks on the square lattice in the bulk, modelling a system of homopolymers that can undergo gelation by introducing two distinct interaction parameters that differentiate between the zipping of only two or all three walks. We establish functional equations for the model's corresponding generating function that are subsequently solved exactly by means of the \emph{obstinate kernel method}. We then proceed to analyse our model, first considering the case where triple-walk interaction effects are ignored, finding that our model exhibits two phases which we classify as free and gelated regions, with the system exhibiting a second-order phase transition. We then analyse the full model where both interaction parameters are incorporated, presenting the full phase diagram and highlighting the additional existence of a first-order gelation boundary.

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arXiv2014

Writhe-induced knotting in a lattice polymer

We consider a simple lattice model of a topological phase transition in open polymers. To be precise, we study a model of self-avoiding walks on the simple cubic lattice tethered to a surface and weighted by an appropriately defined writhe. We also consider the effect of pulling the untethered end of the polymer from the surface. Regardless of the force we find a first-order phase transition which we argue is a consequence of increased knotting in the lattice polymer, rather than due to other effects such as the formation of plectonemes.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2014

Analysis of mean cluster size in directed compact percolation near a damp wall

We investigate the behaviour of the mean size of directed compact percolation clusters near a damp wall in the low-density region, where sites in the bulk are wet (occupied) with probability $p$ while sites on the wall are wet with probability $p_w$. Methods used to find the exact solution for the dry case ($p_w=0$) and the wet case ($p_w=1$) turn out to be inadequate for the damp case. Instead we use a series expansion for the $p_w=2p$ case to obtain a second order inhomogeneous differential equation satisfied by the mean size, which exhibits a critical exponent $γ=2$, in common with the wet wall result. For the more general case of $p_w=rp$, with $r$ rational, we use a modular arithmetic method of finding ODEs and obtain a fourth order homogeneous ODE satisfied by the series. The ODE is expressed exactly in terms of $r$. We find that in the damp region $0<r<2$ the critical exponent $γ^{\rm damp}=1$, in common with the dry wall result.

math-ph↗

arXiv2012

Semi-flexible interacting self-avoiding trails on the square lattice

Self-avoiding walks self-interacting via nearest neighbours (ISAW) and self-avoiding trails interacting via multiply-visited sites (ISAT) are two models of the polymer collapse transition of a polymer in dilute solution. On the square lattice it has been established numerically that the collapse transition of each model lies in a different universality class. It has been shown that by adding stiffness to the ISAW model a second low temperature phase eventuates and a more complicated phase diagram ensues with three types of transition that meet at a multi-critical point. For large enough stiffness the collapse transition becomes first-order. Interestingly, a phase diagram of a similar structure has been seen to occur in an extended ISAT model on the triangular lattice without stiffness. It is therefore of interest to see the effect of adding stiffness to the ISAT model. We have studied by computer simulation a generalised model of self-interacting self-avoiding trails on the square lattice with a stiffness parameter added. Intriguingly, we find that stiffness does not change the order of the collapse transition for ISAT on the square lattice for a very wide range of stiffness weights. While at the lengths considered there are clear bimodal distributions for very large stiffness, our numerical evidence strongly suggests that these are simply finite-size effects associated with a crossover to a first-order phase transition at infinite stiffness.

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arXiv2009

Exact Solution of the Discrete (1+1)-dimensional RSOS Model with Field and Surface Interactions

We present the solution of a linear Restricted Solid--on--Solid (RSOS) model in a field. Aside from the origins of this model in the context of describing the phase boundary in a magnet, interest also comes from more recent work on the steady state of non-equilibrium models of molecular motors. While similar to a previously solved (non-restricted) SOS model in its physical behaviour, mathematically the solution is more complex. Involving basic hypergeometric functions ${}_3ϕ_2$, it introduces a new form of solution to the lexicon of directed lattice path generating functions.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2007

The competition of hydrogen-like and isotropic interactions on polymer collapse

We investigate a lattice model of polymers where the nearest-neighbour monomer-monomer interaction strengths differ according to whether the local configurations have so-called ``hydrogen-like'' formations or not. If the interaction strengths are all the same then the classical $θ$-point collapse transition occurs on lowering the temperature, and the polymer enters the isotropic liquid-drop phase known as the collapsed globule. On the other hand, strongly favouring the hydrogen-like interactions give rise to an anisotropic folded (solid-like) phase on lowering the temperature. We use Monte Carlo simulations up to a length of 256 to map out the phase diagram in the plane of parameters and determine the order of the associated phase transitions. We discuss the connections to semi-flexible polymers and other polymer models. Importantly, we demonstrate that for a range of energy parameters two phase transitions occur on lowering the temperature, the second being a transition from the globule state to the crystal state. We argue from our data that this globule-to-crystal transition is continuous in two dimensions in accord with field-theory arguments concerning Hamiltonian walks, but is first order in three dimensions.

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