Fig. 2.

Schematic representation of the two independent swelling mechanisms for interacting trees (a). (b) With quenched connectivity, branched polymers can swell only by stretching its linear sections. (c) With annealed connectivity, in addition to stretching linear sections, branching polymers can also simplify the connectivity which can become somewhat “less branched” as, for instance, in the combo-like conformation shown in the picture. Then, to achieve the same overall swelling, an annealed tree has to stretch its linear sections by a lesser amount than the quenched counterpart.