Figure 5.

Mean minimal surface area, ⟨min S⟩, of ring polymers as a function of the total number of entanglements, Z, of the chain. The ○ and × symbols (see legend) are for the two chosen resolutions in the triangulation procedure at the basis of the calculation of the ring minimal surface (see Section 3.5 for details). For the higher resolution, we take two additional refining steps before the minimization procedure stops. Error bars are smaller than the symbols’ size. The power laws (dashed lines) correspond to best fits to the data.