Electrophoresis in strong fields

Abstract
We present a computer simulation on a lattice of a long charged polymer diffusing in a topologically restricted environment in the presence of an electric field. The problem is related to that of a set of self-attracting particles diffusing in a random environment. For strong fields the polymer gets trapped in metastable configurations, so that the relaxation time of the polymer has an exponential dependence on chain length. Various correlation functions such as the mean square displacement vary logarithmically with time.