A stress field is the distribution of internal forces in a body that balance a given set of external forces. Stress fields are widely used in fluid dynamics and materials science. Consider that one can picture the stress fields as the stress created by adding an extra half plane of atoms to a crystal. The bonds are clearly stretched around the location of the dislocation and this stretching causes the stress field to form. Atomic bonds farther and farther away from the dislocation centre are less and less stretched which is why the stress field dissipates as the distance from the dislocation centre increases. Each dislocation within the material has a stress field associated with it. The creation of these stress fields is a result of the material trying to dissipate mechanical energy that is being exerted on the material. By convention, these dislocations are labelled as either positive or negative depending on whether the stress field of the dislocation is mostly compressive or tensile.