Fingerprinting Brownian Motions of Polymers under Flow

ZQ Shen and JMY Carrillo and BG Sumpter and YY Wang, PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS, 129, 057801 (2022).

DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.057801

We present a quantitative approach to the self-dynamics of polymers under steady flow by employing a set of complementary reference frames and extending the spherical harmonic expansion technique to dynamic density correlations. Application of this method to nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulations of polymer melts reveals a number of universal features. For both unentangled and entangled melts, the center-of-mass motions in the flow frame are described by superdiffusive, anisotropic Gaussian distributions, whereas the isotropic component of monomer self-dynamics in the center-of-mass frame is strongly suppressed. Spatial correlation analysis shows that the heterogeneity of monomer self-dynamics increases significantly under flow.

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