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Crystallographic point group

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Crystallographic point group

In crystallography, a crystallographic point group is a three-dimensional point group whose symmetry operations are compatible with a three-dimensional crystallographic lattice. According to the crystallographic restriction it may only contain one-, two-, three-, four- and sixfold rotations or rotoinversions. This reduces the number of crystallographic point groups to 32 (from an infinity of general point groups). These 32 groups are the same as the 32 types of morphological (external) crystalline symmetries derived in 1830 by Johann Friedrich Christian Hessel from a consideration of observed crystal forms. In 1867 Axel Gadolin, who was unaware of the previous work of Hessel, found the crystallographic point groups independently using stereographic projection to represent the symmetry elements of the 32 groups.

In the classification of crystals, to each space group is associated a crystallographic point group by "forgetting" the translational components of the symmetry operations, that is, by turning screw rotations into rotations, glide reflections into reflections and moving all symmetry elements into the origin. Each crystallographic point group defines the (geometric) crystal class of the crystal.

The point group of a crystal determines, among other things, the directional variation of physical properties that arise from its structure, including optical properties such as birefringency, or electro-optical features such as the Pockels effect.

The point groups are named according to their component symmetries. There are several standard notations used by crystallographers, mineralogists, and physicists.

For the correspondence of the two systems below, see crystal system.

In Schoenflies notation, point groups are denoted by a letter symbol with a subscript. The symbols used in crystallography mean the following:

Due to the crystallographic restriction theorem, n = 1, 2, 3, 4, or 6 in 2- or 3-dimensional space.

D4d and D6d are actually forbidden because they contain improper rotations with n=8 and 12 respectively. The 27 point groups in the table plus T, Td, Th, O and Oh constitute 32 crystallographic point groups.

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