Crossover behavior for long reptating polymers

Abstract

We analyze the Rubinstein-Duke model for polymer reptation by means of density matrix renormalization techniques. We find a crossover behavior for a series of quantities as function of the polymer length. The crossover length may become very large if the mobility of end groups is small compared to that of the internal reptons. Our results offer an explanation to a controversy between theory, experiments and simulations on the leading and subleading scaling behavior of the polymer renewal time and diffusion constant.