Interpretation of the Quenching Experiments on Gold

The behavior of vacancies in gold during quenching is treated theoretically under the assumption that the total number is conserved, although they may aggregate into pairs and triplets. Approximate solutions of the equations governing the abundance of isolated vacancies is obtained in the case in which only a small fraction aggregate, that is, in the limit in which the quench is very rapid. This situation appears to correspond to that observed in gold when the rate of quench is near 3×{}10⁴ degrees per sec. It is concluded that the binding energy of a pair of vacancies is between 0.1 and 0.2 ev and that the activation energy for migration of a pair is lower than that of a single vacancy by no more than 0.2 ev.