"Doctoral thesis accepted by Imperial College London, UK."

Includes bibliographical references.

Introduction -- Dislocations -- Stochastic Motion -- Atomistic simulations in bcc Metals -- Properties of Coarse Grained Dislocations -- The Stochastic Force on Crystal Defects -- Conclusions and Outlook.

This thesis is concerned with establishing a rigorous,
modern theory of the stochastic and dissipative forces on
crystal defects, which remain poorly understood despite
their importance in any temperature dependent micro-
structural process such as the ductile to brittle
transition or irradiation damage. The author first uses
novel molecular dynamics simulations to parameterise an
efficient, stochastic and discrete dislocation model that
allows access to experimental time and length scales.
Simulated trajectories are in excellent agreement with
experiment. The author also applies modern methods of
multiscale analysis to extract novel bounds on the
transport properties of these many body systems. Despite
their successes in coarse graining, existing theories are
found unable to explain stochastic defect dynamics. To
resolve this, the author defines crystal defects through
projection operators, without any recourse to elasticity.
By rigorous dimensional reduction, explicit analytical
forms are derived for the stochastic forces acting on
crystal defects, allowing new quantitative insight into
the role of thermal fluctuations in crystal plasticity.

Online resource; title from PDF title page (Ebsco, viewed July 16, 2015).