Numerical Coarse-Graining of Polymer Field Theories

ORAL

Abstract

Field theoretic models of polymers are widely used to investigate polymer self-assembly, but numerical simulations of these models that include full fluctuation physics are computationally demanding and infrequently conducted. To reduce this computational cost, we propose the use of systematically coarse-grained field theories that can be simulated on a coarsely spaced lattice without truncation of important short-wavelength physics. We present a variational method for numerically executing this coarse-graining, in which fine-grained simulation data is used to parameterize trial coarse-grained models, and results from the application of this method to some model systems.

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Authors

  • Michael Villet

    Department of Chemical Engineering, University of California Santa Barbara, University of California, Santa Barbara

  • Glenn Fredrickson

    University of California, Santa Barbara, University of California Santa Barbara, MC-CAM and the Departments of Materials and Chemical Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara, Materials Research Lab, UCSB, CA