Eur. Phys. J. E (2013) 36: 47
https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/i2013-13047-6

Regular Article

The average shape of the closed trefoil knot fluctuating on a floppy rope

Department of Computational Physics, Poznan University of Technology, Nieszawska 13A, 60-965, Poznan, Poland

^* e-mail: Marcin.Modlinski@doctorate.put.poznan.pl

Received: 8 August 2012
Accepted: 5 April 2013
Published online: 14 May 2013

Abstract

The average shape of the trefoil knot tied on a floppy, hard rope subject to thermal fluctuations has been determined. The fluctuations of the shape of knots were performed by random bending. As a result of the changing shape procedure large sets of deformed conformations of the initial knot were obtained. Afterwards, these sets were subject to the shape-fitting procedure. It has been found that the conformation is different from the ideal conformation of the knot.