Link length and energy fluctuations in extensible freely jointed chains (opens in new tab)

The freely jointed chain is often applied to model the thermodynamics of single polymer chains, but the traditional formulation of the model lacks internal energy changes due to bond stretching. For this reason, the extensible freely jointed chain model includes a potential energy function, typically harmonic, that governs the length of each link in the chain. Among the other quantities of interest that are subject to thermal fluctuations, these...