# gst: apropos of avoidance, packing of stiff rods on ellipsoids; the effects of self-avoidance

AA << study the effects of geometry and self-avoidance on the ordering of slender filaments inside nonisotropic containers, considering cortical microtubules in plant cells, and packing of genetic material inside viral capsids as concrete examples. >>

<< Within a mean-field approximation, (AA) show analytically how the shape of the container, together with self-avoidance, affects the ordering of the stiff rods. (They)  find that the strength of the self-avoiding interaction plays a significant role in the preferred packing orientation, leading to a first-order transition for oblate cells, where the preferred orientation changes from azimuthal, along the equator, to a polar one, when self-avoidance is strong enough. >>

<< While for prolate spheroids the ground state is always a polar-like order, strong self-avoidance results with a deep metastable state along the equator. >>

<< the critical behavior of this system is in fact related to the butterfly catastrophe model. >>

Doron Grossman, Eytan Katzav. Effects of self-avoidance on the packing of stiff rods on ellipsoids. Phys. Rev. E 109, 054111. May 9, 2024. 

https://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.109.054111

Also: spheroids, self-assembly, in https://www.inkgmr.net/kwrds.html 

Keywords: gst, ellipsoids, spheroids,  oblate- prolate spheroids, avoidance, self-avoidance