Understanding nonequilibrium scaling laws governing collapse of a polymer

Abstract

Recent emerging interest in experiments of single-polymer dynamics urge computational physicists to revive their understandings, particularly in the nonequilibrium context. Here we briefly discuss the currently evolving approaches of investigating the evolution dynamics of homopolymer collapse in computer simulations. Primary focus of these approaches is to understand various dynamic scaling laws related to coarsening and aging during the collapse in space dimension $d=3$, using tools popular in nonequilibrium coarsening dynamics of particle or spin systems. In addition to providing an overview of those results, we also present new preliminary data for $d=2$.