Alladi Ramakrishnan Hall

Glassy dynamics of semi-stiff ring polymers under pressure

Projesh Roy

IMSc

In this talk, I will discuss the glassy properties of semi-stiff ring polymers under pressure, and the origin of the topological glass phase. Unlike the traditional routes for glass formation (e.g. temperature quenching, jamming protocols), topological glasses are formed due to topological interactions between the ring polymers at a larger length scale. This phenomenon is termed threading and it is unique to the ring polymers. Previously, it was shown that upon pinning a set of completely flexible ring polymers in a model system, one can induce threading and obtain a stable topological glass phase. In this work, we have investigated the effect of stiffness and pressure on the dynamics of the ring-polymer systems. We have shown that with increasing stiffness and pressure one can also induce threading into the system and a stable topological glass phase exists in the stiffness-pressure phase diagram. Hence, no artificial pinning methods are needed to obtain the topological glass phase for semi-stiff ring polymers.