Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 238301 (2007) [4 pages]Polymers in a VacuumReceived 13 June 2007; published 3 December 2007 In a variety of situations, isolated polymer molecules are found in a vacuum, and here we examine their properties. Angular momentum conservation is shown to significantly alter the average size of a chain and its conservation is only broken slowly by thermal radiation. For an ideal chain, the time autocorrelation for monomer position oscillates with a period proportional to chain length. The oscillations and damping are analyzed in detail. Short-range repulsive interactions suppress oscillations and speed up relaxation, but stretched chains still show damped oscillatory correlations. © 2007 The American Physical Society URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.99.238301
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.99.238301
PACS:
82.35.Lr, 82.37.−j, 82.80.Ms
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