Non-singular screw dislocations as the Coulomb gas with smoothed out coupling and the renormalization of the shear modulus

A field theory is developed for a thermodynamical description of array of parallel non-singular screw dislocations in elastic cylinder. The partition function of the system is considered in the functional integral form. Self-energy of the dislocation cores is chosen in the form suggested by the gauge-translational model of non-singular screw dislocation. It is shown that the system of the dislocations is equivalent to the two-dimensional Coulomb gas. The coupling potential is prevented from a short-distance divergency since the core energies are taken into account. Two-point correlation functions of the stress components are obtained. Renormalization of the shear modulus caused by the presence of the dislocations is studied in the approximation of non-interacting dislocation dipoles. It is demonstrated that the finite size of the dislocation cores results in a modification of the renormalization law.