Study of Polymer Knots in Equilibrium and Non-equilibrium Conditions

Abstract

Knotted molecules occur naturally. They usually bear and can be engineered to exhibit unique biological and material properties. While molecular knotting inherently takes place in non-equilibrium conditions, much of our current understanding has been developed through equilibrium statistical physics. In this thesis, I review previous studies on molecular knotting and explore its behavior when the equilibrium assumption no longer holds. Additionally, recognizing and generating knotted structures remain open challenges in mathematics and physics. To address these, I present our original work leveraging deep learning to develop efficient solutions for both problems.

Date of Award	6 Oct 2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	City University of Hong Kong
Supervisor	Liang DAI (Supervisor)