How to define variation of physical properties normal to an undulating one-dimensional object.

One-dimensional flexible objects are abundant in physics, from polymers to vortex lines to defect lines and many more. These objects structure their environment and it is natural to assume that the influence these objects exert on their environment depends on the distance from the line object. But how should this be defined? We argue here that there is an intrinsic length scale along the undulating line that is a measure of its stiffness (i.e., orientational persistence), which yields a natural way of defining the variation of physical properties normal to the undulating line. We exemplify how this normal variation can be determined from a computer simulation for the case of a so-called bottle-brush polymer, where side chains are grafted onto a flexible backbone.