MONTE-CARLO STUDY OF SEMIFLEXIBLE LIVING POLYMERS

We study the order-disorder phase transition and the cluster-size distribution of ''living polymers'' in a lattice-hole model of a polydisperse system of semiflexible chain macromolecules by Monte Carlo simulation. In two dimensions we find that the transition line in T-mu space (temperature-chemical potential) contains a tricritical point and that the values of the critical exponents along the second-order portion of the phase boundary belong to the Ising universality class. In three dimensions a finite-size scaling analysis suggests that the phase transition is always first order. In both cases the chain lengths of the polymers follow an exponential probability distribution although the dependence of the mean chain length on density and temperature deviates from predictions of analytical theory.