Spiral folding of a flexible chain of chiral active particles

Abstract

We investigate a flexible polymer chain made up of chiral active Brownian particles in two dimensions using computer simulations. In the presence of chiral active Brownian forces, the radius of gyration of the chain reduces significantly. We further identify the formation of spirals using the tangent-tangent correlation to characterize the internal structure of the chain. The polymer chain forms a pair of spirals with opposite spiral turns on both ends of the polymer. We compute the number of turns of both spirals, and find that the total number of turns increases with angular frequency as well as P{\'e}clet number. However, the spirals become weak and the number of turns decreases at a very high P{\'e}clet number. We draw a phase diagram using the turn number. The end-to-end correlation displays oscillatory behavior, which signifies the rotational dynamics of the chain. We quantify the rotation frequency from the end-to-end vector, which follows a power law behavior with exponent $3/2$. We also provide a scaling relation between the radius of gyration and the chain length, and the exponent decreases significantly in the presence of chiral active forces.