Cyclization dynamics of finite-length collapsed self-avoiding polymers

Abstract

We study the end-point cyclization of ideal and interacting polymers as a function of chain length N. For the cyclization time �cyc of ideal chains we recover the known scaling �cyc � N2 for different backbone models, for a self-avoiding slightly collapsed chain we obtain from Langevin simulations and scaling theory a modified scaling �cyc � N5=3. By extracting the memory kernel that governs the non-Markovian end-point kinetics, we demonstrate that the dynamics of a finite-length collapsed chain is dominated by the crossover between swollen and collapsed behavior.