Freely jointed chain models with extensible links

Fellow researchers,

Please consider reading our recent paper, "Freely jointed chain models with extensible links" published by Physical Review E.

We demonstrate how to obtain analytic relations for the single-chain mechanical response of the freely-jointed chain model supplemented to have arbitrary link potentials. These relations are derived directly from the fundamental principles of statistical thermodynamics, and are asymptotically valid as the link potentials become steep. We verify this approach using several link potentials (harmonic, Morse, logarithmic, Lennard-Jones) and provide our source code in the Python package uFJC. Our approach has broad applications: not only to other single-chain models, but also to the stretching of general molecular models.

Thanks,
Michael R. Buche