CONFORMATIONS OF POLYMERS WITH RANDOM BRANCHES OF CONSTANT NUMBER IN ATHERMAL ISOLATED CONDITION

Computer simulations were carried out for self-avoiding walk conformat ions of randomly branched polymers on a simple cubic lattice. The numb er of segments (N) and branching points (rn) are set constant. The max imum N and m examined are 500 and 5, respectively. No attractive energ y among the segments is considered. The standard success-walk number i s 100000 for every condition. A critical exponent (upsilon) on N for t he root of the mean square radius of gyration ([s(2)](1/2)) is found t o be 0.598. This upsilon is the same value as those of both linear and star-branched polymers reported in other papers. The g-values (=[s(2) ](branch)/[s(2)](linear)) Obtained are nearly equal to those of the ra ndom walk in the rn-range of this work. Generalization of the conclusi on is speculated. upsilon of the case where m distributes statisticall y is estimated to be 0.35 which is smaller by about 0.1 than that of o ther randomly-branched polymers. The difference, 0.1, might be attribu ted to that of the distribution of branching points. The above descrip tion assumes the polymers long and flexible.