A new numerical method for linear rheology of living polymers

Living polymers such as wormlike micelles have attracted considerable experimental and theoretical interest over the past three decades, but the differential-integral equations that describe the joint processes of reversible scission and stress relaxation were only recently developed and have not yet been solved. Here, we introduce a numerical method that is simple, stable, accurate, flexible, and fast compared to alternatives. After validating the method and its predictions, we provide a preliminary discussion on previously unquantified sources of uncertainty in a popular stochastic approach to modeling the same problem.