Summary of Theoretical Results

The above expressions illustrate the central role that the tunneling probability has in determining the quantum mechanical elements of plastic flow. The tunneling probability, T(t,U), contains all of the dependencies of the applied shear stress, temperature and lattice potential that effect plastic deformation. 

The tunneling probability allows a number of simplifications. For example, because the effective mass of a dislocation is large, the shape of the complicated lattice potential often is not important and can be approximated by a square well potential which has analytic solutions. This will be used to simplify the prediction of the initiation probability due to an applied shear stress. 

In this section calculations will be under taken to illustrate the ability of the above theory to account for the experimental observations. The first of these to be addressed is the surprising plastic deformation behavior of RDX. 

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