Effects of dislocations on the stiffness of charge density wave

Effects of dislocations on the stiffness of charge density wave (CDW) with a three-dimensional order is studied using the Ginzburg-Landau theory of CDW. In this paper, we concentrate on the motion of the dislocation along the conducting chains of CDW. The Peierls potential, which is a periodic potential felt by the dislocations in a crystal and works so as to preserve the stiffness of the crystal by suppressing the dislocation motion, is estimated for the case of CDW. It is shown that the Peierls potential is vanishingly small in most CDW systems. This indicates the possibility of the softening of CDW in the presence of dislocations, which may be important in understanding the experimentally observed field effect on CDW transport. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.