Self-avoiding walks adsorbed at a surface and pulled at their mid-point

Abstract

We consider a self-avoiding walk on the $d$-dimensional hypercubic lattice, terminally attached to an impenetrable hyperplane at which it can adsorb. When a force is applied the walk can be pulled off the surface and we consider the situation where the force is applied at the middle vertex of the walk. We show that the temperature dependence of the critical force required for desorption differs from the corresponding value when the force is applied at the end-point of the walk. This is of interest in single molecule pulling experiments since it shows that the required force can depend on where the force is applied. We also briefly consider the situation when the force is applied at other interior vertices of the walk.