Entanglement, Elasticity, and Viscous Relaxation of Actin Solutions

Abstract

We have investigated the viscosity and the plateau modulus of actin solutions with a magnetically driven rotating disk rheometer. For entangled solutions we observed a scaling of the plateau modulus versus concentration with a power of 7/5. The measured terminal relaxation time increases with a power 3/2 as a function of polymer length. We interpret the entanglement transition and the scaling of the plateau modulus in terms of the tube model for semiflexible polymers.