A detailed analytical and numerical analysis was made of the dislocation cloud surrounding a disclination. The analytical results showed that the combined system behaved as a single disclination, with an effective charge which could be calculated from the properties of the grain boundaries which formed the dislocation cloud. Expressions were also provided for the case where the crystal was subjected to an external 2-dimensional pressure. The analytical results were generalized to a scaling form for the energy which, up to core energies, was given by the Young’s modulus of the crystal; multiplied by a universal function. The accuracy of the universality hypothesis was numerically checked to high accuracy. The numerical approach, which was based upon a generalization of previous work, was interesting in its own right and permitted the estimation of the energy of an arbitrary distribution of defects, on an arbitrary geometry with an arbitrary elastic energy; with little additional computational effort.

Universality in the Screening Cloud of Dislocations Surrounding a Disclination. A.Travesset: Physical Review B, 2003, 68[11], 115421 (15pp)