We showed previously that α ≈ -1/3. Given that the polymer conformation was initially that in a good solvent, ν ≈ 0.6 according to the Flory theory. In the absence of hydrodynamic interactions, which are neglected in the Langevin dynamics simulations that we have used, the polymer diffusion coefficient is expected to scale with N -1 , 81 so β = -1. Thus, under conditions corresponding to this work, eqn (6) predicts a scaling of c † ∼ N 0.47 . The best-fit scaling observed in the simulations was c † ∼ N 0.58 , which reasonably close to the predicted scaling given the significant approximations made in this simple theory. Note that, accounting for statistical uncertainty, the theoretical N 0.47 scaling is also consistent with the simulation values in Fig. .