Passage Times for Unbiased Polymer Translocation through a Narrow Pore

Abstract

We study the translocation process of a polymer in the absence of external fields for various pore diameters b and membrane thickness L. The polymer performs Rouse and reptation dynamics. The mean translocation time (tau(t)) that the polymer needs to escape from a cell and the mean dwell time (tau(d)) that the polymer spends in the pore during the translocation process obey scaling relations in terms of the polymer length N, L, and b/R(g), where R(g) is the radius of gyration for the polymer. We explain these relations using simple arguments based on polymer dynamics and the equilibrium properties of polymers.