Local Structure Analysis and Defect Characterization in Atomic-Resolution Images
Matt Elsey,  CIMS

Abstract:
Recent advances in atomic-resolution imaging allow us to capture enormous data sets, but techniques for efficiently analyzing these images are lacking. To address this shortcoming, we propose a variational method which yields a tensor field describing the local crystal strain at each point. Local values of this field describe the crystal orientation and elastic distortion, while the curl of the field locates and characterizes crystal defects and grain boundaries. The proposed energy functional has a simple L2-L1 structure which permits minimization via a split Bregman iteration, and GPU parallelization results in short computing times. Joint work with Benedikt Wirth.