Space group

The space group of hexagonal H2O ice is P63/mmc. The first m indicates the mirror plane perpendicular to the c-axis (a), the second m indicates the mirror planes parallel to the c-axis (b), and the c indicates the glide planes (b) and (c). The black boxes outline the unit cell.

In mathematics, physics and chemistry, a space group is the symmetry group of a repeating pattern in space, usually in three dimensions.[1] The elements of a space group (its symmetry operations) are the rigid transformations of the pattern that leave it unchanged. In three dimensions, space groups are classified into 219 distinct types, or 230 types if chiral copies are considered distinct. Space groups are discrete cocompact groups of isometries of an oriented Euclidean space in any number of dimensions. In dimensions other than 3, they are sometimes called Bieberbach groups.

In crystallography, space groups are also called the crystallographic or Fedorov groups, and represent a description of the symmetry of the crystal. A definitive source regarding 3-dimensional space groups is the International Tables for Crystallography Hahn (2002).

  1. ^ Hiller, Howard (1986). "Crystallography and cohomology of groups". The American Mathematical Monthly. 93 (10): 765–779. doi:10.2307/2322930. JSTOR 2322930. Archived from the original on 2022-09-29. Retrieved 2015-01-31.