Journal of Statistical Physics, Vol. 27, No. 1, 1982. p. 19-35.
Conformational changes of linear polymers are studied by means of dynamic lattice models. The relaxation rates for the following four parameters describing the conformation of the polymer are studied for various polymer lengths: the square of the end-to-end distance, the square of the radius of gyration, the x component of the end-to-end vector, and the number of windings. In the most realistic models the relaxation rates for the first three of the above-mentioned properties decrease approximately proportional to the square of the number of monomers in agreement with the well-known Rouse model, while the relaxation of the winding number appears to be independent of the polymer length. The long-range interactions due to excluded volume restrictions are found to be of only minor importance compared to the rules presented for the local movements of the polymer segments. The results are obtained by diagonalizing the Markov matrix for n = 3, 4, 5, and 6 and by Monte Carlo simulation for n = 8, 16, 32, 64, and 128, where n is the number of monomers.