Dynamics of Ring Polymers in the Presence of Fixed Obstacles

Abstract

The configurations and dynamics of a polymer ring ($R$) inside a strongly crosslinked polymer gel ($G$) are discussed and compared to those of linear ($L$) and branched ($B$) polymers in $G$. $R$ is not topologically connected to $G$ in the sense that the contour line of $R$ can be reduced to a point without crossing any of the chains of $G$. This topological requirement leads to the correspondence between the configurations of $R$ in $G$ and the set of lattice trees (randomly branched polymers). But the dynamics of $R$ in $G$ is much faster than that of entangled $B$, and is similar to the dynamics of entangled $L$.