  Mechanical shear deformations lead, in some cases, to effects similar to
those resulting from ion irradiation. Here we characterize the effects of shear
velocity and temperature on amorphous silicon (\aSi) modelled using classical
molecular dynamics simulations based on the empirical Environment Dependent
Inter-atomic Potential (EDIP). With increasing shear velocity at low
temperature, we find a systematic increase in the internal strain leading to
the rapid appearance of structural defects (5-fold coordinated atoms). The
impacts of externally applied strain can be almost fully compensated by
increasing the temperature, allowing the system to respond more rapidly to the
deformation. In particular, we find opposite power-law relations between the
temperature and the shear velocity and the deformation energy. The spatial
distribution of defects is also found to strongly depend on temperature and
strain velocity. For low temperature or high shear velocity, defects are
concentrated in a few atomic layers near the center of the cell while, with
increasing temperature or decreasing shear velocity, they spread slowly
throughout the full simulation cell. This complex behavior can be related to
the structure of the energy landscape and the existence of a continuous
energy-barrier distribution.
