# Point group

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زمرة نقطية (Ar). Groupe ponctuel (Fr). Punktgruppe (Ge). Gruppo punto (It). 点群 (Ja). Точечная группа симметрии (Ru). Grupo puntual (Sp).

## Definition

A point group is a group of symmetry operations all of which leave at least one point unmoved. A crystallographic point group is a point group that maps a point lattice onto itself: in three dimensions the symmetry operations of these groups are restricted to 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and $\bar 1$, $\bar 2$ (= m), $\bar 3$, $\bar 4$, $\bar 6$ respectively.

## Occurrence

Crystallographic point groups occur:

• in vector space, as symmetries of the external shapes of crystals (morphological symmetry), as well as symmetry of the physical properties of the crystal ('vector point group');
• in point space, as site-symmetry groups of points in lattices or in crystal structures, and as symmetries of atomic groups and coordination polyhedra ('point point group').

## Controversy on the nomenclature

The matrix representation of a symmetry operation consists of a linear part, which represents the rotation or rotoinversion component of the operation, and a vector part, which gives the shift to be added once the linear part of the operation has been applied. The vector part is divided into two components: the intrinsic component, which represents the screw and glide component of the operation, and the location component, which is non-zero when the symmetry element does not pass through the origin. The set of the linear parts of the matrices representing the symmetry operations of a space group is a representation of the point group of the crystal. On the other hand, the set of matrix-vector pairs representing the symmetry operations of a site symmetry group form a group which is isomorphic to a crystallographic point group. The vector part being in general non-zero, some authors reject the term point group for the site-symmetry groups. On the other hand, all the symmetry operations of a site symmetry group do leave invariant at least one point, albeit not necessarily the origin, satisfying the above definition of point group.