Models of polymer collapse in three dimensions: Evidence from kinetic growth simulations

We present simulational evidence that kinetically grown tricolor walks and kinetically grown trails on selected lattices in three dimensions are equivalent to interacting walks and trails at their respective collapse temperatures, all of which model polymers in dilute solution at the {θ} point. We discuss the relation of these models to the canonical model of a single self-attracting polymer in dilute solution: the self-avoiding walk with nearest-neighbor interactions. The main results concern the divergence of the specific heat and these differ from the predictions of the (three-parameter) Edwards model. The behavior of the kinetic trail simulations also raises doubts about the current field theoretic description of collapse in interacting trails.