On the motion of curved dislocations in three dimensions: Simplified linearized elasticity.

It is shown that in core-radius cutoff regularized simplified elasticity (where the elastic energy depends quadratically on the full displacement gradient rather than its symmetrized version), the force on a dislocation curve by the negative gradient of the elastic energy asymptotically approaches the mean curvature of the curve as the cutoff radius converges to zero. Rigorous error bounds in Holder spaces are provided. As an application, convergence of dislocations moving by the gradient flow of the elastic energy to dislocations moving by the gradient flow of the arclength functional, when the motion law is given by an $H^1$-type dissipation, and convergence to curve shortening flow in co-dimension $2$ for the usual $L^2$-dissipation is established. In the second scenario, existence and regularity are assumed while the $H^1$-gradient flow is treated in full generality (for short time). The methods developed here are a blueprint for the more physical setting of linearized isotropic elasticity.