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Introduction

This is probably the single most significant parameter aside from the solvent model (the Flory parameters). The persistence length is notated here as $\xi$ and has the units of nucleotides (nt). The persistence length is also sometimes also referred to as the Kuhn length. Its magnitude indicates the extent of correlation of a group of monomers in a given polymer. For most polymers, $\xi$ is greater than the number of monomers. In a sequence of maximum stretched out length $b$ (units of length), and monomer separation distance $L$ (units of length), the polymer can be expressed as a collection of effective monomers of number ( $N^{\prime}=N/ \xi$) whose separation distance is $b^{\prime}= \xi b$: $L = N^{\prime} b^{\prime} = N b$.



Wayne Dawson 2005-02-03