Dynamical properties of the slithering-snake algorithm: a numerical test of the activated-reptation hypothesis

Correlations in the motion of reptating polymers in a melt are investigated by means of Monte Carlo simulations of the three-dimensional slithering-snake version of the bond-fluctuation model. Surprisingly, the slithering-snake dynamics becomes inconsistent with classical reptation predictions at high chain overlap (created either by chain length N or by the volume fraction phi of occupied lattice sites), where the relaxation times increase much faster than expected. This is due to the anomalous curvilinear diffusion in a finite time window whose upper bound tau+(N) is set by the density of chain ends phi/N. Density fluctuations created by passing chain ends allow a reference polymer to break out of the local cage of immobile obstacles created by neighboring chains. The dynamics of dense solutions of "snakes" at t<