The core energy of dislocations

The main part of the line energy of dislocations in solids can be described by elastic continuum theory (linear, nonlinear and nonlocal). There remains, however, a core part which must be treated atomistically. Based on dimensional arguments it is shown that independent of the interatomic potential and independent of the core configuration there exists a unique correlation between the elastic energy and the atomic misfit energy. This results from the fact that the displacements are coupled to the asymptotic field of a singular dislocation.