Laboratoire de Physique Théorique
Toulouse - UMR 5152

Single polymers can often display complex and anomalous dynamics. In this talk I will review some examples of single polymers dynamics recently studied by our group : the DNA hairpin folding [1] and the winding/unwinding of a polymer on/from a rod [2-4]. The results of Langevin dynamics simulations indicate that the dynamics is characterized by "anomalous" power-law dependence of various quantities as a function of time. We show how the numerical results can be explained by force balance arguments using the blob model and a multiphase picture of the polymer conformations.

[1] R. Frederickx, T. In’t Veld, E. Carlon, "Anomalous dynamics of DNA hairpin folding", Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 198102 (2014). [2] J-C. Walter, M. Baiesi, G. T. Barkema, E. Carlon, "Unwinding relaxation dynamics of polymers", Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 068301 (2013) [3] J.-C. Walter, M. Baiesi, E. Carlon, H. Schiessel, "Unwinding dynamics of a helically wrapped polymer", Macromolecules 47, 4840 (2014). [4] M. Laleman et al., "Torque-induced rotational dynamics in polymers : Torsional blobs and thinning", preprint (2015)