C. Micheletti, D. Marenduzzo, E. Orlandini and D.W. Sumners
Knot spectrum of confined self-avoiding walks
In proceedings of the conference: Knots and soft-matter physics. Bussei-Kenyu38-42 (2009)
Abstract : Advanced stochastic sampling techniques are used to probe the conguration
space of self-avoiding
exible rings subject to spatial connement. The sampled ring conforma-
tions are next processed by algorithms that exactly classify knots in rings that are not excessively
conned. The physical parameters of the rings, i.e. contour length, bending rigidity and steric
hindrance, are properly chosen to mimic the properties of DNA of the P4 bacteriophage, while
the radius of the smallest sphere used to conne the model rings is about 2.5 times larger than
the P4 capsid radius. By comparing the computed knot spectrum with the P4 one we establish
that the consideredmodel correctly predicts an increase of the occurrence of chiral knots with
progressive connement but does not account for the bias of torus versus twist knots observed
in P4 experiments.