The electrostatic persistence length of polymers beyond the OSF limit

We use large-scale Monte Carlo simulations to test scaling theories for the electrostatic persistence length l _e of isolated, uniformly charged polymers with Debye-Hückel intrachain interactions in the limit where the screening length κ^-1 exceeds the intrinsic persistence length of the chains. Our simulations cover a significantly larger part of the parameter space than previous studies. We observe no significant deviations from the prediction l _e∝κ^-2 by Khokhlov and Khachaturian which is based on applying the Odijk-Skolnick-Fixman theories of electrostatic bending rigidity and electrostatically excluded volume to the stretched de Gennes-Pincus-Velasco-Brochard polyelectrolyte blob chain. A linear or sublinear dependence of the persistence length on the screening length can be ruled out. We show that previous results pointing into this direction are due to a combination of excluded-volume and finite chain length effects. The paper emphasizes the role of scaling arguments in the development of useful representations for experimental and simulation data. Received 12 February 2002