What is the Entanglement Length in a Polymer Melt ?
Abstract
We present results of molecular dynamics simulations of very long model polymer chains analyzed by various experimentally relevant techniques. The segment motion of the chains is found to be in very good agreement with the repatation model. We also calculated the plateau-modulus GN. The predicitions of the entanglement length Ne from GN and from the mean square displacements of the chains segments disagree by a factor of about 2.2(2), indicating an error in the prefactor in the standard formula for GN. We show that recent neutron spin echo measurements were carried out for chain lengths which are too small for a correct determination of Ne.
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