This concise, class-tested book was refined over the authors’ 30 years as instructors at MIT and the University Federal of Minas Gerais (UFMG) in Brazil. The approach centers on the conviction that teaching group theory along with applications helps students to learn, understand and use it for their own needs. Thus, the theoretical background is confined to introductory chapters. Subsequent chapters develop new theory alongside applications so that students can retain new concepts, build on concepts already learned, and see interrelations between topics. Essential problem sets between chapters aid retention of new material and consolidate material learned in previous chapters.
This book is devoted to the construction of space group representations, their tabulation, and illustration of their use. Representation theory of space groups has a wide range of applications in modern physics and chemistry, including studies of electron and phonon spectra, structural and magnetic phase transitions, spectroscopy, neutron scattering, and superconductivity. The book presents a clear and practical method of deducing the matrices of all irreducible representations, including double-valued, and tabulates the matrices of irreducible projective representations for all 32 crystallographic point groups. One obtains the irreducible representations of all 230 space groups by multiplying the matrices presented in these compact and convenient to use tables by easily computed factors. A number of applications to the electronic band structure calculations are illustrated through real-life examples of different crystal structures. The book's content is accessible to both graduate and advanced undergraduate students with elementary knowledge of group theory and is useful to a wide range of experimentalists and theorists in materials and solid-state physics.
Geared toward postgraduate students, theoretical physicists, and researchers, this advanced text explores the role of modern group-theoretical methods in quantum theory. The authors based their text on a physics course they taught at a prominent Soviet university. Readers will find it a lucid guide to group theory and matrix representations that develops concepts to the level required for applications. The text's main focus rests upon point and space groups, with applications to electronic and vibrational states. Additional topics include continuous rotation groups, permutation groups, and Lorentz groups. A number of problems involve studies of the symmetry properties of the Schroedinger wave function, as well as the explanation of "additional" degeneracy in the Coulomb field and certain subjects in solid-state physics. The text concludes with an instructive account of problems related to the conditions for relativistic invariance in quantum theory.
These Proceedings cover various topics in modern physics in which group theoretical methods can be applied effectively. The two volumes, containing over 100 papers, cover such areas as representation theory, the theory and applications of dynamical symmetries and coherent states, symmetries in atomic, molecular, nuclear and elementary particle physics, field theory including gauge theories, supersymmetry and supergravity, general relativity and cosmology, the theory of space groups and its applications to solid state physics and phase transitions, the problems of quantum and classical mechanics and paraxial optics, and the theory of nonlinear equations and solitons.
This book starts with an introduction to quantitative texture analysis (QTA), which adopts conventions (active rotations, definition of Euler angles, Wigner D-functions) that conform to those of the present-day mathematics and physics literature. Basic concepts (e.g., orientation; orientation distribution function (ODF), orientation density function, and their relationship) are made precise through their mathematical definition. Parts II and III delve deeper into the mathematical foundations of QTA, where the important role played by group representations is emphasized. Part II includes one chapter on generalized QTA based on the orthogonal group, and Part III one on tensorial Fourier expansion of the ODF and tensorial texture coefficients. This work will appeal to students and practitioners who appreciate a precise presentation of QTA through a unifying mathematical language, and to researchers who are interested in applications of group representations to texture analysis. Previously published in the Journal of Elasticity, Volume 149, issues 1-2, April, 2022
A revised and updated English edition of a textbook based on teaching at the final year undergraduate and graduate level. It presents structure and bonding, generalizations of structural trends, crystallographic data, as well as highlights from the recent literature.
Site Symmetry in Crystals is the first comprehensive account of the group-theoretical aspects of the site (local) symmetry approach to the study of crystalline solids. The efficiency of this approach, which is based on the concepts of simple induced and band representations of space groups, is demonstrated by considering newly developed applications to electron surface states, point defects, symmetry analysis in lattice dynamics, the theory of second-order phase transitions, and magnetically ordered and non-rigid crystals. Tables of simple induced respresentations are given for the 24 most common space groups, allowing the rapid analysis of electron and phonon states in complex crystals with many atoms in the unit cell.