In amorphous materials, plasticity is localized and occurs as shear
transformations. It was recently shown by Wu et al. that these shear
transformations can be predicted by applying topological defect concepts
developed for liquid crystals to an analysis of vibrational eigenmodes [Wu et
al.; Nat. Com.,2023]. This study relates the -1 topological defects to the
displacement fields expected of an Eshelby inclusion, which are characterized
by an orientation and the magnitude of the eigenstrain. A corresponding
orientation and magnitude can be defined for each defect using the local
displacement field around each defect. These parameters characterize the
plastic stress relaxation associated with the local structural rearrangement
and can be extracted using the fit to either the global displacement field or
the local field. Both methods provide a reasonable estimation of the
MD-measured stress drop, confirming the localized nature of the displacements
that control both long-range deformation and stress relaxation