Single polymer dynamics in elongational flow and the confluent Heun equation

We investigate the non-equilibrium dynamics of an isolated polymer in a stationary elongational flow. We compute the relaxation time to the steady-state configuration as a function of the Weissenberg number. A strong increase of the relaxation time is found around the coil-stretch transition, which is attributed to the large number of polymer configurations. The relaxation dynamics of the polymer is solved analytically in terms of a central two-point connection problem for the singly confluent Heun equation.