Seminarium Kosmologia i Fizyka Cząstek

Field theories play an important role in the description of polymer systems. For instance, topological field theories are the most relevant ingredient in modelling the statistical properties of the knots and links formed by DNA, while supersymmetry appears in the dynamics of polymers and is very helpful in computing the expectation values of the physical observables.After an introduction on the field theoretical approach to polymer physics, two particular examples will be developed in some more detail.The first example illustrates how the application of topological field theories has contributed to our understanding of the statistical mechanics of linked polymer rings. The second example is an attempt to formulate the dynamics of a polymer chain using the point of view of string theory.