Renormalized Field Theory of Polyelectrolyte Solutions

Abstract

We present a field-theoretic renormalization group (RG) analysis of a dilute solution of flexible, screened polyelectrolyte chains (Debye-Hueckel chains) in a polar solvent. We perform a virial expansion to calculate the scaling dependence of the Osmotic pressure on the chain density, chain size and screening length. The formalism is developed for general chain distributions and we give explicit forms for a monodisperse chain size distribution. We utilize the fact that a Debye-Hueckel chain may be mapped to a local field theory with TWO length-scales requiring the calculation of scaling functions as well as exponents to fully describe its scaling behaviour.