Role of the Coulomb interaction in the low-frequency density of states of DNA double helices

Abstract
The complete vibrational frequency spectrum of several DNA double-helical oligomers is calculated using established pair potentials. Various cutoff values are used for the range of the Coulomb interactions. At very low frequency the integrated density of states shows a noninteger exponent with values ranging from 0.75 to 1.55, depending on the cutoff value for the Coulomb interactions. We conclude that the cumulative densities of states in those molecules depend more on competing interactions than on various proposed universal laws.