Figure 2
From: Knot Energy, Complexity, and Mobility of Knotted Polymers
Representative configurations for a 41 polymeric knot before (left) and after (right) including a repulsive charge interaction on the polymer beads. The addition of an electrostatic repulsive interaction reduces the average Coulomb energy and the fluctuations in the knotted ring shape arising from thermal fluctuations. The number of chain configurations decreases progressively with increasing Z until the knotted ring adopt an apparently unique configuration, the “canonical form”.
