Forced translocation of a polymer: Dynamical scaling versus molecular dynamics simulation

We suggest a theoretical description of the force-induced translocation dynamics of a polymer chain through a nanopore. Our consideration is based on the tensile (Pincus) blob picture of a pulled chain and the notion of a propagating front of tensile force along the chain backbone, suggested by Sakaue [Phys. Rev. E 76, 021803 (2007); Phys. Rev. E 81, 041808 (2010); Eur. Phys. J. E 34, 135 (2011)]. The driving force is associated with a chemical potential gradient that acts on each chain segment inside the pore. Depending on its strength, different regimes of polymer motion (named after the typical chain conformation: trumpet, stem-trumpet, etc.) occur. Assuming that the local driving and drag forces are equal (i.e., in a quasistatic approximation), we derive an equation of motion for the tensile front position $X(t)$. We show that the scaling law for the average translocation time τ changes from τ~N^2ν/f^1/ν to τ~N^1+ν/f (for the free-draining case) as the dimensionless force ̃ \~fR=aN^νf/T (where a, N, ν, f, and T are the Kuhn segment length, the chain length, the Flory exponent, the driving force, and the temperature, respectively) increases. These and other predictions are tested by molecular-dynamics simulation. Data from our computer experiment indicate indeed that the translocation scaling exponent α grows with the pulling force ̃ \~fR, albeit the observed exponent α stays systematically smaller than the theoretically predicted value. This might be associated with fluctuations that are neglected in the quasistatic approximation.