ASPHERICITY AND PROLATENESS OF LINEAR AND CIRCULAR MACROMOLECULES*

The shape asymmetry of gaussian models of linear and circular macromolecules hasbeen numerically invesigated in terms of asphericity and prolateness parameters. Theseparameters are found to decrease with increasing length for the macromolecule eitherconfined to a plane or in three dimensions. The effect of dimensionality on theseparameters is visible only for low dimensions and is generally weak. As dimensionality goes to infinity, it is found that asphericity and prolateness for both chains and rings approach slowly yet descendingly values of corresponding asphericity and prolateness factors,with the exception of the chain which shows a minimum value of asphericity when the embedding space has a dimensionality of four.