SOME UNUSUAL FEATURES OF THE CONFIGURATION OF POLYMER LOOPS IN A MELT

A diversity of structural features can be imposed on a melt of polymer loops by controlling the linking number between each pair of loops. F or the simple case of unlinked loops, considered in this paper, new st atistical weighting factors have been found which depend on the global configurational properties of writhe and self inductance. The separat e effect of these terms is extreme: the writhe term favours rod-like s tatistics, whereas the inductance favours globular configurations. Tog ether the two terms tend to cancel each other in a way which is remini scent of the screened potential in polymer chain melts. The result is that the exponent which describes the size of an unlinked loop in a me lt of unlinked loops is perturbed from the gaussian result of 0.5 to 0 .45.