Free energy of a long semiflexible polymer confined in a spherical cavity

Abstract

The free energy and conformational properties of a wormlike chain confined inside a spherical surface are investigated. We show that in the weak-confinement limit, the wormlike chain model exactly reproduces the confinement properties of a Gaussian chain; in such a case the confinement entropy dominates the free energy; in the strong-confinement limit, the free energy is dominated by the bending energy of the chain, which is forced to wrap around the confining surface. We also present a numerical solution within the crossover region between the two limits, solving the differential equation that the probability distribution function satisfies.