Topological and threading effects in polydisperse ring polymer solutions

Abstract

We explore effective interactions in dilute polydisperse ring polymer solutions. Based on a topological and threading analysis, we deduce the steric, topological and threading contributions to the effective potentials for differently sized rings. Additionally, we quantify the contribution of topological constraints for different asymmetries of the ring length. Further, we compare how the effective potentials change when mutual ring threading is restricted and we characterise the threading depth distributions at different center-of-mass ring separations.