Description of the chains under study

The method consists in constructing all the chains with N links which starts from an origin site O. This method has been particularly developed in England and notably by Domb,2 Sykes, and Martin. As the number of chains increases exponentially with the number of links, it is necessary to reduce the counting 

Nevertheless, the chains for which the number of configurations can be counted exactly are always rather short. For the chains that have been studied, the maximum numbers N of links are as follows  

N = 17 (Martin, Sykes, and Hioe 1967)6 Distance between end points 

N = 14 (Martin and Watts 1971)4 Second virial coefficient (osmotic pressure) 

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