Anisotropic colloidal particles interacting with polymers in a good solvent.

We study the consequences of chain self-avoidance for the interaction between nonadsorbing polymers and colloidal particles of anisotropic shape, such as ellipsoids, lenses, and dumbbells. In the framework of a field theoretic operator expansion for small mesoscopic particles, we obtain exact results for self-avoiding polymers in d=2 spatial dimensions and we compare ideal and self-avoiding polymers in 2<d<4. Changing the orientation of a particle, with a given size and shape, near a boundary wall requires less free energy if the chains are self-avoiding. The distance dependence of the anisotropic interation, mediated by the polymers between particle and wall, is changed both qualitatively and quantitatively by self-avoidance.