Dislocations and Bragg glasses in two dimensions

Abstract

We discuss the question of the generation of topological defects (dislocations) by quenched disorder in two dimensional periodic systems. In a previous study [Phys. Rev. B {\bf 52} 1242 (1995)] we found that, contrarily to $d=3$, unpaired dislocations appear in $d=2$ above a length scale $ξ_D$, which we estimated. We extend this description to include effects of freezing and pinning of dislocations at low temperature. The resulting $ξ_D$ at low temperature is found to be {\it larger} than our previous estimate, which is recovered above a characteristic temperature. The dependence of $ξ_D$ in the bare core energy of dislocations is a stretched exponential. We stress that for all temperatures below melting $ξ_D$ becomes arbitrarily large at weak disorder compared to the translational order length $R_a \gg a$. Thus there is a wide region of length scales, temperature and disorder where Bragg glass like behavior should be observable.