Driven polymer translocation in good and bad solvent: effects of hydrodynamics and tension propagation

Abstract: We investigate the driven polymer translocation through a nanometer-scale pore in the presence and absence of hydrodynamics both in good and bad solvent. We present our results on tension propagating along the polymer segment on the cis-side that is measured for the first time using our method that works also in the presence of hydrodynamics. For simulations we use stochastic rotation dynamics, also called multi-particle collision dynamics. We find that in the good solvent the tension propagates very similarly whether hydrodynamics is included or not. Only the tensed segment is by a constant factor shorter in the presence of hydrodynamics. The shorter tensed segment and the hydrodynamic interactions contribute to a smaller friction for the translocating polymer when hydrodynamics is included, which shows as smaller waiting times and a smaller exponent in the scaling of the translocation time with the polymer length. In the bad solvent hydrodynamics has a minimal effect on polymer translocation in contrast to the good solvent where it speeds up translocation. We find that under bad-solvent conditions tension does not spread appreciably along the polymer. Consequently, translocation time does not scale with the polymer length. By measuring the effective friction in a setup where a polymer in free solvent is pulled by a constant force at the end, we find that hydrodynamics does speed up collective polymer motion in the bad solvent even more effectively than in the good solvent. However, hydrodynamics has a negligible effect on the motion of individual monomers within the highly correlated globular conformation on the cis-side and hence on the entire driven translocation under bad-solvent conditions.