Scaling Behavior of Anisotropy Relaxation in Deformed Polymers

Drawing an analogy to the paradigm of quasielastic neutron scattering, we present a general approach for quantitatively investigating the spatiotemporal dependence of structural anisotropy relaxation in deformed polymers by using small-angle neutron scattering. Experiments and nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulations on polymer melts over a wide range of molecular weights reveal that their conformational relaxation at relatively high momentum transfer Q and short time can be described by a simple scaling law, with the relaxation rate proportional to Q. Furthermore, this peculiar scaling behavior, which cannot be derived from the classical Rouse and tube models, is indicative of a surprisingly weak direct influence of entanglement on the microscopic mechanism of single-chain anisotropy relaxation.