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In many biological processes highly charged biomolecules are adsorbed into oppositely charged surfaces of macroions and membranes. They form strongly correlated structures close to the surface which can not be explained by the conventional Poisson-Boltzmann theory. Many of the flexible biomolecules can be described by Gaussian polymers. In this work strong coupling theory is used to study the adsorption of highly charged Gaussian polyelectrolytes. Two cases of adsorptions are considered, when the Gaussian polyelectrolytes are confined a) by one charged wall, and b) between two charged walls. The effects of salt and the geometry of the polymers on their adsorption- depletion transitions in the strong coupling regime are discussed., Comment: 7 figures

Aggregation of like-charged polymers is widely observed in biological and soft matter systems. In many systems, bundles are formed when a short-range attraction of diverse physical origin like charge-bridging, hydrogen-bonding or hydrophobic interaction, overcomes the longer- range charge repulsion. In this Letter, we present a general mechanism of bundle formation in these systems as the breaking of the translational invariance in parallel aligned polymers with competing interactions of this type. We derive a criterion for finite-sized bundle formation as well as for macroscopic phase separation (formation of infinite bundles)., Comment: accepted for publication in Europhys Lett

Inspired by recent experiments and simulations on pattern formation in biomolecules by optical tweezers, a theoretical description based on reference interaction site model (RISM) integral equation method is developed to calculate the equilibrium density profiles of small polyelectrolytes in an external potential. The formalism is applied to the specific case of a finite number of polyelectrolytes trapped in a harmonic potential. The density profiles of flexible Gaussian and rigid rod-like polyelectrolytes are studied over a range of lengths and numbers of polyelectrolytes in the trap and the Coulomb coupling parameter. For smaller polymers we recover the results for point charges. In the mean field limit the point particles do not form shells for any values of the coupling parameter whereas the longer polymers form a shell at the boundary at moderate coupling. When the inter-polymer cor- relations are included the density profile of the polymers shows sharp shells even at weak coupling. The implications of these results are also discussed.

We present a 2D lattice model of water to study the effects of ion hydration on the properties of water. We map the water molecules as lattice particles consisting of a single Oxygen at the center of a site and two Hydrogen atoms on each side. The internal state of the system, such as the dipole moment at a site, is defined with respect to the location of the Hydrogen atoms at the site depending on their role in Hydrogen bonds (H-bonds) being a donor or an acceptor. We study the influence of the charge and the radius of the ion on the insertion energy and on the H-bonds in the first and second hydration layers around the ion and in the bulk. In particular we analyze how the competing interactions of the short-ranged H-bonds and the long-ranged electrostatics influence the hydration properties. The role of the ion both as a source of the electrostatic interactions as well as a defect is also discussed. Our model also shows the well known fact that the polarizability of the water molecules destroys the hydrogen bond network and increases the dipole moment of the molecules near the ion., Comment: 11 Figures

Strong coupling phenomena, such as the like charged macroions attraction, opposite charged macroions repulsion, charge renormalization or charge inversion, are known to be mediated by multivalent counterions. Most theories treat the counterions as point charges, and describe the system by a single coupling parameter that measures the strength of the Coulomb interactions. In many biological systems, the counterions are highly charged and have finite sizes and can be well-described by polyelectrolytes. The shapes and orientations of these polymer counterions play a major role in the thermodynamics of these systems. In this work we apply a field theoretic description in the strong coupling regime to polyelectrolytes. We work out the special cases of rod-like polymer counterions confined by one and two charged walls respectively. The effects of the geometry of the rod-like counterions and the excluded volume of the walls on the density, pressure and the free energy of the rodlike counterions are discussed., Comment: 6 Figures

We study the strong-coupling (SC) interaction between two like-charged membranes of finite thickness embedded in a medium of higher dielectric constant. A generalized SC theory is applied along with extensive Monte-Carlo simulations to study the image charge effects induced by multiple dielectric discontinuities in this system. These effects lead to strong counterion crowding in the central region of the inter-surface space upon increasing the solvent/membrane dielectric mismatch and change the membrane interactions from attractive to repulsive at small separations. These features agree quantitatively with the SC theory at elevated couplings or dielectric mismatch where the correlation hole around counterions is larger than the thickness of the central counterion layer., Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures

We present general arguments for the importance, or lack thereof, of the structure in the charge distribution of counterions for counterion-mediated interactions between bounding symmetrically charged surfaces. We show that on the mean field or weak coupling level, the charge quadrupole contributes the lowest order modification to the contact value theorem and thus to the intersurface electrostatic interactions. The image effects are non-existent on the mean-field level even with multipoles. On the strong coupling level the quadrupoles and higher order multipoles contribute additional terms to the interaction free energy only in the presence of dielectric inhomogeneities. Without them, the monopole is the only multipole that contributes to the strong coupling electrostatics. We explore the consequences of these statements in all their generality., Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures