https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/s10189-023-00384-6
Regular Article - Soft Matter
Scaling regimes for wormlike chains confined to cylindrical surfaces under tension
1
Department of Physics, University of Houston, 77204, Houston, TX, USA
2
Center for Theoretical Biological Physics, Rice University, 77005, Houston, TX, USA
3
Departments of Chemistry, The University of Texas at Austin, 78712, Austin, TX, USA
4
Department of Physics, The University of Texas at Austin, 78712, Austin, TX, USA
Received:
26
August
2023
Accepted:
20
November
2023
Published online:
22
January
2024
We compute the free energy of confinement 
for a wormlike chain (WLC), with persistence length 
, that is confined to the surface of a cylinder of radius R under an external tension f using a mean field variational approach. For long chains, we analytically determine the behavior of the chain in a variety of regimes, which are demarcated by the interplay of , the Odijk deflection length (
), and the Pincus length (
, with 
being the thermal energy). The theory accurately reproduces the Odijk scaling for strongly confined chains at 
, with 
. For moderate values of f, the Odijk scaling is discernible only when 
for strongly confined chains. Confinement does not significantly alter the scaling of the mean extension for sufficiently high tension. The theory is used to estimate unwrapping forces for DNA from nucleosomes.
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© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to EDP Sciences, SIF and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2024. Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
