Analysis of stable screw dislocation configurations in an anti--plane lattice model

Abstract: We consider a variational anti-plane lattice model and demonstrate that at zero temperature, there exist locally stable states containing screw dislocations, given conditions on the distance between the dislocations, and on the distance between dislocations and the boundary of the crystal. In proving our results, we introduce approximate solutions which are taken from the theory of dislocations in linear elasticity, and use the inverse function theorem to show that local minimisers lie near them. This gives credence to the commonly held intuition that linear elasticity is essentially correct up to a few spacings from the dislocation core.