Peierls Energy of Dislocations: A Critical Assessment

The normal way to calculate the Peierls energy for dislocations follows the procedure of Peierls and Nabarro, who summed the atomic misfit energy in the glide plane at the position of the atoms. Since the misfit energy is not localized but rather contained in the electron distribution, some averaging must be made. This effect can lead to a considerable lowering of the classic Peierls energy and the resulting Peierls stress.