Defect production in simulated cascades: Cascade quenching and short-term annealing

Defect production in displacement cascades in copper has been modeled using the MARLOWE code to generate cascades and the stochastic annealing code ALSOME to simulate cascade quenching and short-term annealing of isolated cascades. Quenching is accomplished by using exaggerated values for defect mobilities and for critical reaction distances in ALSOME for a very short time. The quenched cascades are then short-term annealed with normal parameter values. The quenching parameter values were empirically determined by comparison with results of resistivity measurements. Throughout the collisional, quenching and short-term annealing phases of cascade development, the high energy cascades continue to behave as a collection of independent lower energy lobes. For recoils above about 30 keV the total number of defects and the numbers of free defects scale with the damage energy. As the energy decreases from 30 keV, defect production varies with the changing nature of the cascade configuration, resulting in more defects per unit damage energy. The simulated annealing of a low fluence of interacting cascades revealed an interstitial shielding effect on depleted zones during Stage I recovery. (orig.)