Phenomenology of the plastic flow of amorphous solids induced by heavy-ion bombardment

Abstract
Amorphous solids exhibit at temperatures far below the glass transition plastic flow when bombarded with fast heavy ions (kinetic energy ∼1 MeV/u). The dimensions perpendicular to the ion beam grow whereas the sample dimension parallel to the ion beam shrinks. The strain tensor describing phenomenologically these dimensional changes is derived from symmetry considerations and compared with experiment. Particular attention is devoted to angular changes, which have not been discussed in this context so far.