The constraints imposed by nano- and microscale confinement on theconformational degrees of freedom of thermally fluctuating biopolymers areutilized in contemporary nano-devices to specifically elongate and manipulatesingle chains. A thorough theoretical understanding and quantification of thestatistical conformations of confined polymer chains is thus a central concernin polymer physics. We present an analytical calculation of the radialdistribution function of harmonically confined semiflexible polymers in theweakly bending limit. Special emphasis has been put on a proper treatment ofglobal modes, i.e. the possibility of the chain to perform global movementswithin the channel. We show that the effect of these global modes significantlyimpacts the chain statistics in cases of weak and intermediate confinement.Comparing our analytical model to numerical data from Monte Carlo simulationswe find excellent agreement over a broad range of parameters.
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