Edited by: Thomas Hochrainer (TU Graz, Austria), Lasse Laurson (Tampere University, Finland), Stefanos Papanikolaou (NOMATEN Centre of Excellence, Poland), Giacomo Po (University of Miami, USA), Ryan Sills (Rutgers University, USA)
Dislocations represent the major emergent defects of crystals under mechanical loads. Their loop topology and their ability to multiply leads to immense defect configurational complexity at finite deformation strains. This complexity controls various mechanical properties (yield strength, work and kinematic hardening). It has been clear that the success in the characterization of the dislocation ensembles' complexity needs to go through the development and understanding of novel collective dislocation measures that may provide insights and predictions. Notable examples have been Nye's dislocation density tensor and 2-point dislocation density correlations. In this thematic series in Materials Theory, research results will be discussed at the frontiers of complexity, measures and characterization of dislocation ensembles. We request manuscripts focused on recent advances in techniques, metrics, and formalisms for characterizing the complexity in dislocation line and network morphology, topology, patterning, and dynamics.