A geometric framework for polymer folding

The problem of finding the folding pathway of a polymer, a fundamental issue in the field of molecular biophysics, is viewed from a geometrical standpoint. A riemannian metric on conformation space related to hydrodynamical features of the system and a drift related to the potential are used to derive a diffusion equation governing the time-dependent probability in conformation space. The thermodynamic equilibrium limit is found to be consistent with Boltzmann's measure.