Study of spatial correlations in a crumpled wire trapped in two-dimensional cavities of different topologies

In this paper, it is reported a study of spatial correlations in configurations of a plastic wire trapped in two-dimensional planar cavities of different topologies defined by particular distributions of fixed pins that introduce excluded domains. The configurations examined were obtained from an extensive experimental study that shows that the jammed packing fraction of the wire within the cavities depends heavily on the topology of the cavity. The analysis reveals regions of the configurations dominated by finite-size effects controlled by the drive force of injection, and bulk domains strongly controlled by the density of pins. In the bulk regime a persistence length, as obtained in the Kratky?Porod model of polymers, is found to depend linearly with the number of pins which develops the role of an inverse effective temperature. That is, the temperature for the system in this case depends on the topology of the space. The regions characterized by finite-size effects present two regimes corresponding to different mechanical rigidities.