Helical structures from an isotropic homopolymer model

Magee, James E. and Vasquez, Victor R. and Lue, Leo (2006) Helical structures from an isotropic homopolymer model. Physical Review Letters, 96. p. 207802. ISSN 1079-7114 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.96.207802)

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Abstract

We present Monte Carlo simulation results for square-well homopolymers at a series of bond lengths. Although the model contains only isotropic pairwise interactions, under appropriate conditions this system shows spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking, where the chain exists in either a left- or a right-handed helical structure. We investigate how this behavior depends upon the ratio between bond length and monomer radius.