arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to S G Whittington.
We prove several rigorous results about the asymptotic behaviour of the numbers of tadpoles (or lassos) embedded in a lattice, including cases where the head is subject to a constraint like being unknotted, or where the tail pierces the surface spanned by the head. Similar results can be proved for other homeomorphism types such as dumbbells, twin tailed tadpoles and two tailed tadpoles.
We prove several rigorous results about the asymptotic behaviour of the numbers of polygons and self-avoiding walks confined to a square on the square lattice. Specifically we prove that the dominant asymptotic behaviour of polygons confined to an LxL square is identical to that of self-avoiding walks that cross an LxL square from one corner vertex to the opposite corner vertex. We also prove a result about the subdominant asymptotic behaviour of self-avoiding walks crossing a square and extend this result to polygons confined to a square. In addition, we investigate the problems of self-avoiding walks and polygons in a hypercube in the d-dimensional hypercubic lattice.
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.
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.
We consider a simple cubic lattice self-avoiding walk model of 3-star polymers adsorbed at a surface and then desorbed by pulling with an externally applied force. We determine rigorously the free energy of the model in terms of properties of a self-avoiding walk, and show that the phase diagram includes 4 phases, namely a ballistic phase where the extension normal to the surface is linear in the length, an adsorbed phase and a mixed phase, in addition to the free phase where the model is neither adsorbed nor ballistic. In the adsorbed phase all three branches or arms of the star are adsorbed at the surface. In the ballistic phase two arms of the star are pulled into a ballistic phase, while the remaining arm is in a free phase. In the mixed phase two arms in the star are adsorbed while the third arm is ballistic. The phase boundaries separating the ballistic and mixed phases, and the adsorbed and mixed phases, are both first order phase transitions. The presence of the mixed phase is interesting because it doesn't occur for pulled, adsorbed self-avoiding walks. In an atomic force microscopy experiment it would appear as an additional phase transition as a function of force.
In this paper we study a two-dimensional directed self-avoiding walk model of a random copolymer in a random emulsion.
We present the exact solutions of various directed walk models of polymers confined to a slit and interacting with the walls of the slit via an attractive potential. We consider three geometric constraints on the ends of the polymer and concentrate on the long chain limit. Apart from the general interest in the effect of geometrical confinement this can be viewed as a two-dimensional model of steric stabilization and sensitized flocculation of colloidal dispersions. We demonstrate that the large width limit admits a phase diagram that is markedly different from the one found in a half-plane geometry, even when the polymer is constrained to be fixed at both ends on one wall. We are not able to find a closed form solution for the free energy for finite width, at all values of the interaction parameters, but we can calculate the asymptotic behaviour for large widths everywhere in the phase plane. This allows us to find the force between the walls induced by the polymer and hence the regions of the plane where either steric stabilization or sensitized flocculation would occur.