The core energy of dislocations

Abstract

The main part of the line energy of dislocations in solids can be described by elastic continuum theory (linear, nonlinear and nonlocal). There remains, however, a core part which must be treated atomistically. Based on dimensional arguments it is shown that independent of the interatomic potential and independent of the core configuration there exists a unique correlation between the elastic energy and the atomic misfit energy. This results from the fact that the displacements are coupled to the asymptotic field of a singular dislocation.