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Concept
Point group
Summary
In geometry, a point group is a mathematical group of symmetry operations (isometries in a Euclidean space) that have a fixed point in common. The coordinate origin of the Euclidean space is conventionally taken to be a fixed point, and every point group in dimension d is then a subgroup of the orthogonal group O(d). Point groups are used to describe the symmetries of geometric figures and physical objects such as molecules.
Each point group can be represented as sets of orthogonal matrices M that transform point x into point y according to y = Mx. Each element of a point group is either a rotation (determinant of M = 1), or it is a reflection or improper rotation (determinant of M = −1).
The geometric symmetries of crystals are described by space groups, which allow translations and contain point groups as subgroups. Discrete point groups in more than one dimension come in infinite families, but from the crystallographic restriction theorem and one of Bieberbach's theorems, each number of dimensions has only a finite number of point groups that are symmetric over some lattice or grid with that number of dimensions. These are the crystallographic point groups.
Point groups can be classified into chiral (or purely rotational) groups and achiral groups.
The chiral groups are subgroups of the special orthogonal group SO(d): they contain only orientation-preserving orthogonal transformations, i.e., those of determinant +1. The achiral groups contain also transformations of determinant −1. In an achiral group, the orientation-preserving transformations form a (chiral) subgroup of index 2.
Finite Coxeter groups or reflection groups are those point groups that are generated purely by a set of reflectional mirrors passing through the same point. A rank n Coxeter group has n mirrors and is represented by a Coxeter-Dynkin diagram. Coxeter notation offers a bracketed notation equivalent to the Coxeter diagram, with markup symbols for rotational and other subsymmetry point groups.
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