ON ELECTROSTATIC RIGIDITY OF POLYELECTROLYTES - AN ANALOGY WITH QUANTUM ELECTRODYNAMICS

Using previously discovered similarity between the semiflexible polyme rs and Dirac fermions (Ann. Phys. 202 (1990) 186) a new treatment of d ilute polyelectrolyte solutions is proposed. The electrostatic contrib ution l(e) to the persistence length as a function of ionic strength I is calculated both perturbatively and nonperturbatively, exploiting t he analogy between the polyelectrolyte problems and that studied in qu antum electrodynamics. Obtained results are in very good agreement wit h the available recent experimental data which indicate that I-e propo rtional to I--1/2. They also clarify and complement earlier calculatio ns of Skolnick, Fixman and Odijk.