Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2011
Cascade size may affect phase stability under irradiation because of two distinct contributions: the replacement to displacement cross section ratio depends on the deposited energy density; ballistic jumps which tend to disorder ordered compounds occur by bursts (of size b), while thermal jumps which restore long range order occur one by one.
The latter effect cannot be handled by standard rate theory. A stochastic treatment of the problem, based on a Fokker Planck approximation of the relevant master equation is summarized. It is shown that the possible values of the long range order parameter under irradiation are not affected by the size b of the bursts, but that the respective stability of the former is b dependent. As a consequence, the stability diagram of phases under irradiation varies with b. Such a diagram is computed for the Ni4Mo system where three structures are competing: the disordered solid solution, Dia and D023. A broadening by 100K of the stability domain of the short range ordered structure to the expense of the long range ordered one is predicted when increasing b from 1 to 100.
The stochastic potentials introduced in the present treatment are by no means free energies of some constrained state. They can however be computed in a mean field type approximation.