What is the structure of a polymer glass after plastic deformation?
We aim to study the effect of plastic deformation on the structure of a glassy polymer. Using neutrons scattering on a large range of length scales, and comparing samples deformed below and above Tg, we show that: 1) The deformation is extremely homogeneous (or affine) for length scales above the entanglement distance 2) The crossover length scale between affine and non affine deeformation is about half the one of the entanglements, and is independent of temperature below the glass transition 3) The arrangement of the polymer chain is distorded by plastic deformation at the atomic scale We then discuss these results and compare them to the results of the simulation of Hoy and Robbins (J. Polym. Sci., 44 (2006), 3487). As a conclusion we see that the entanglements are respopnsible for the very homogeneous deformations, forcing the individual plastic events to propagate in the sample following the tension of the chains. Thus we conclude that the physics of the plastic deformation of poly
