  We investigate the impact of dielectric boundary forces on the translocation
process of charged rigid DNA segments through solid neutral nanopores. We
assess the electrostatic contribution to the translocation free energy barrier
of a model DNA segment by evaluating the potential of mean force in absence and
presence of polarization effects by means of coarse-grained molecular dynamics
simulations. The effect of induced polarization charges has been taken into
account by employing ICC*, a recently developed algorithm that can efficiently
compute induced polarization charges induced on suitably discretized dielectric
boundaries. Since water has a higher dielectric constant than the pore walls,
polarization effects repel charged objects in the vicinity of the interface,
with the effect of significantly increasing the free energy barrier. Another
investigated side effect is the change of the counterion distribution around
the charged polymer in presence of the induced pore charges. Furthermore we
investigate the influence of adding salt to the solution.
