Geometric rigidity for incompatible fields in the multi-well case and an application to strain-gradient plasticity

Abstract: We derive a quantitative rigidity estimate for a multi-well problem in nonlinear elasticity with dislocations. Precisely, we show that the $L^{1^{*}}$-distance of a possibly incompatible strain field $\beta$ from a single well is controlled in terms of the $L^{1^{*}}$-distance from a finite set of wells, of ${\rm curl}\beta$, and of ${\rm div}\beta$. As a consequence, we derive a strain-gradient plasticity model as $\Gamma$-limit of a nonlinear finite dislocation model, containing a singular perturbation term accounting for the divergence of the strain field. This can also be seen as a generalization of the result of (Alicandro et al. 2018) to the case of incompatible vector fields.