ENTANGLEMENT, ELASTICITY, AND VISCOUS RELAXATION OF ACTIN SOLUTIONS

We have investigated the viscosity and the plateau modulus of actin so lutions with a magnetically driven rotating disk rheometer. For entang led solutions we observed a scaling of the plateau modulus versus conc entration with a power of 7/5. The measured terminal relaxation time i ncreases with a power 3/2 as a function of polymer length. We interpre t the entanglement transition and the scaling of the plateau modulus i n terms of the tube model for semiflexible polymers. [S0031-9007(98)07 135-X].