Crystallography & Symmetry
patterns derived from their groups
Concept

Invariant ring — where it appears

The collection of all polynomials a group leaves unchanged, closed under sums and products. It is generated by finitely many, and whether those generators satisfy a relation is decided by whether the group contains reflections.

Named by 5 essays across 3 fields — each of them below, with the objects they name alongside it.

Dropping one invariant of 3m makes two orbits agree. Every lattice point within four cells of the origin, coloured by the values a proper subset of 3m's invariants takes on it — the 2 generators with the first one removed, over a window of 4 cells. With the full set, the 25 orbits of the group take 25 distinct sets of values, one each, so the invariants are a complete set of coordinates on the quotient. With one removed, the two circled points — in different orbits, so no operation of the group carries one to the other — take the same values and become indistinguishable. That is the whole content of the statement that a complete set of invariants separates orbits: the completeness is what is doing the work.

An orbit is what the invariants cannot tell apart

Two points of the plane lie in the same orbit of a group exactly when every invariant polynomial takes the same value on both. One direction of that is a definition; the other is a theorem, and it is checked here by comparing every pair of points in a window both ways.

operations · Counting The invariant degrees exist for every n; the lattice permits five of them. The reflection group with an n-fold rotation has an invariant ring generated in degrees 2 and n, for every n whatever — the dimensions on the right are counted by pairing monomials in complex coordinates, which needs no matrix and therefore no lattice. Five of these groups can be written in integer matrices, and those five are named in the middle column; the rest cannot, because a lattice has no five-fold or seven-fold rotation. The crystallographic restriction is usually a statement about traces of matrices. Here it is the statement that only five of these invariant rings belong to a crystal, and the two arguments have nothing in common but their answer.

The degrees that name the restriction

The reflection group with an n-fold rotation has invariants of degrees 2 and n — for every n, with no lattice anywhere in the argument. Which of those groups a crystal may have is then the only question left, and its answer is the crystallographic restriction arriving from a direction nobody points it from.

restriction · Restriction 4mm: how many independent invariants there are at each degree. The number of independent polynomial invariants of the plane point group 4mm, one bar per degree from 0 to 8. The heights are the coefficients of the Molien series, computed from an integer recursion on the trace and determinant of each operation. A dot above a bar marks a degree where the same number has been computed a second way, by averaging every monomial of that degree over the group and taking the rank of the result — a computation sharing no code with the first. The two agree at every degree checked. Degrees where the bar is absent hold no invariant at all: for 4mm that is every odd degree below the first invariant, and it is a statement about which functions the group refuses to leave alone.

How many invariants of each degree

A group moves the plane about, and some polynomials do not notice. How many independent ones there are at each degree is a sequence of integers, computed here by a recursion on traces and again by averaging every monomial — two routes that share no code and agree everywhere.

point-groups · Invariants Six of the ten plane classes have a free invariant ring, and four do not. Every plane point group, with the degrees of the generators of its invariant ring, whether the ring is free, and the relation where it is not. The six generated by their own reflections — 1, m, 2mm, 4mm, 3m and 6mm — have two generators whose degrees multiply to the order of the group, which is Chevalley's theorem checked rather than quoted. The four without reflections — 2, 4, 3 and 6 — need three generators in two variables, so one polynomial relation ties them together, and the degree that relation appears at is printed at the right of its row. Nothing here is a lookup: the generators are found degree by degree as the invariants the earlier ones do not reach, and the relation is the kernel of the map back to polynomials.

The groups whose invariants are free

Six of the ten plane classes have an invariant ring generated by two polynomials with no relation between them, and the six are exactly those generated by their own reflections. The degrees of those generators multiply to the order of the group, and their excess counts the reflections.

point-groups · Invariants 4: three generators in two variables, and the one relation between them. The invariant ring of 4 needs 3 generators, of degrees 2, 4, 4, and three functions of two variables cannot be algebraically independent. The relation between them is found rather than quoted: every monomial in the generators of the degree at which they can first be dependent is written out, the map back to polynomials in x and y is formed, and its kernel is the relation. It is then evaluated at points of the lattice, where all three generators take integer values and the combination comes to exactly zero. A group with a reflection has no such relation, which is the same statement as its ring being free.

Three invariants and one relation

Four of the ten plane classes need three invariants where two variables can only support two, so exactly one polynomial identity ties them together. The identity is not recognised or recalled: it is the kernel of a linear map, computed and then checked at lattice points where every term is an integer.

point-groups · Invariants

Named alongside it

The objects these essays reach for when they reach for this one.

Molien seriesInvariant polynomialReflection groupAlgebraic independenceChevalley theoremHypersurfaceInvariant degreesPoint groupSyzygyAveraging projectorCharacterCrystallographic restriction

All concepts