Two mechanisms were proposed, for the non-diffusional refinement of prismatic dislocation loops, as alternatives to the accepted concept of spontaneous disintegration below some critical dipole height. In one mechanism, a loop array was supposed to be refined by reaction with a mobile dislocation having the same Burgers vector. Loop shrinkage then depended upon the geometry of the array and upon the position of the plane of incidence. Any loop array could then be refined, in principle, via this mechanism; provided that all of the loops had the same sign. Another mechanism was suggested for dense walls which were made up of randomly arranged dipolar loops of both signs. As the wall was densified by impacting dislocations which pushed pre-existing loops against each other on the glide prism, refinement occurred conservatively when 2 loops of opposite sign came into contact.

The Annihilation by Glide of Prismatic Loops in Walls. P.Veyssière: Philosophical Magazine Letters, 2001, 81[11], 733-41