Eur. Phys. J. E (2016) 39: 110
https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/i2016-16110-x

Regular Article

Polarizable polymer chain under external electric field: Effects of many-body electrostatic dipole correlations

¹ Department of Applied Mathematics, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia
² Institut für Nichtklassische Chemie e.V., Universität Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany

^* e-mail: ybudkov@hse.ru
^** e-mail: bancocker@mail.ru

Received: 12 October 2016
Accepted: 28 October 2016
Published online: 22 November 2016

Abstract

We present a new simple self-consistent field theory of a polarizable flexible polymer chain under an external constant electric field with account for the many-body electrostatic dipole correlations. We show the effects of electrostatic dipole correlations on the electric-field-induced globule-coil transition. We demonstrate that only when the polymer chain is in the coil conformation, the electrostatic dipole correlations of monomers can be considered as pairwise. However, when the polymer chain is in a collapsed state, the dipole correlations have to be considered at the many-body level.