Narrow Results

We develop a rigorous framework for modeling the geometry equilibration of crystalline defects. We formulate the equilibration of crystal defects as a variational problem on a discrete energy space and establish qualitatively sharp far-field decay estimates for the equilibrium configuration. This work extends [V. Ehrlacher, C. Ortner and A. Shapeev, Analysis of boundary conditions for crystal defect atomistic simulations, Arch. Ration. Mech. Anal.222 (2016) 1217–1268] by admitting infinite-range interaction which in particular includes some quantum chemistry based interatomic interactions.

We develop a model for an anti-plane crack defect posed on a square lattice under an interatomic pair-potential with nearest-neighbour interactions. In particular, we establish existence, local uniqueness and stability of solutions for small loading parameters and further prove qualitatively sharp far-field decay estimates. The latter requires establishing decay estimates for the corresponding lattice Green’s function, which are of independent interest.

A nonlocal phase-field crystal (NPFC) model is presented as a nonlocal counterpart of the local phase-field crystal (LPFC) model and a special case of the structural PFC (XPFC) derived from classical field theory for crystal growth and phase transition. The NPFC incorporates a finite range of spatial nonlocal interactions that can account for both repulsive and attractive effects. The specific form is data-driven and determined by a fitting to the materials structure factor, which can be much more accurate than the LPFC and previously proposed fractional variant. In particular, it is able to match the experimental data of the structure factor up to the second peak, an achievement not possible with other PFC variants studied in the literature. Both LPFC and fractional PFC (FPFC) are also shown to be distinct scaling limits of the NPFC, which reflects the generality. The advantage of NPFC in retaining material properties suggests that it may be more suitable for characterizing liquid–solid transition systems. Moreover, we study numerical discretizations using Fourier spectral methods, which are shown to be convergent and asymptotically compatible, making them robust numerical discretizations across different parameter ranges. Numerical experiments are given in the two-dimensional case to demonstrate the effectiveness of the NPFC in simulating crystal structures and grain boundaries.