Adsorption transition of a self-avoiding polymer chain onto a rigid rod

Abstract

The subject of this work is the adsorption transition of a long flexible self-avoidingpolymer chain onto a rigid thin rod. The rod is represented by a cylinder of radiusR with a short-ranged attractive surface potential for the chain monomers. General scalingresults are obtained by using renormalization group arguments in conjunction withavailable results for quantum field theories with curved boundaries (McAvity and Osborn1993 Nucl. Phys. B 394 728). Relevant critical exponents are identified and estimated usinggeometric arguments.