Confinement of a polymer chain in a tube

We have adapted the transfer matrix method to the confinement of a single polymer molecule in tube-like cavities. The method is exact and numerically efficient for realistic polymer models such as the freely rotating chain and the rotational isomeric chain models. It allows us to calculate the chain end distribution function from which the longitudinal end-to-end distance and the free energy are obtained. The confinement is modelled as a cylindrical potential with soft walls or as a harmonic potential. Known scaling laws are recovered for long chains and strong confinement and new scaling behaviour is found in the intermediate regime. The effect of anchoring one chain end to a base plate of a semi-infinite tube is also studied.