Generator

p4m: freezing Γ2 leaves pmm

The same crystal three times. On the left, a pattern with the full symmetry of p4m. In the middle, the displacement each atom takes under the order parameter — the arrows are the mode, drawn in the first colour for one set of atoms and the second for the other where there are two. On the right, the atoms moved by a small multiple of those displacements. The group of the right-hand pattern is pmm, of index 2 in the parent, and it was found by the detector from the point set alone. The prediction — which operations carry the displacement field to itself — is made separately, from the mode and not from the points, and the two lists of operations are identical.

11 essays call order-parameter. The drawing above is what it returns with no arguments at all; every call below passes it something, because a placement that passes nothing draws whichever member of the family the generator happens to default to rather than the one its essay argues about. Every one of this site's 393 essays names its parameters at the call site, which the standard pass of 2026-08-09 established and param-floor holds.

Where it is called

Changing this generator changes every one of these figures.

p4m: which distortions the atoms of each position can make. Every Wyckoff position of p4m, with the number of independent displacement patterns of each symmetry its atoms supply. A zero is a distortion those atoms cannot make however their amplitudes are chosen — an atom pinned at a rotation centre cannot move in a way that keeps less symmetry than the centre has. The row sums, weighted by the dimensions along the top, come to twice the number of atoms in the cell, which is the check that nothing has been lost. The last column is the number of free coordinates the position has, and it equals the multiplicity of the identity representation in that row: a displacement that keeps every symmetry is exactly a move of the position within its own Wyckoff set.

Operations

Which modes a site can carry

An atom on a mirror cannot move in a way that breaks the mirror while its images move with it: the displacements of a Wyckoff orbit carry a representation, and some of its pieces have multiplicity zero. The count of those pieces is a character, and the one that breaks nothing is the position's own freedom.

p6m: freezing Γ2 leaves p31m. The same crystal three times. On the left, a pattern with the full symmetry of p6m. In the middle, the displacement each atom takes under the order parameter — the arrows are the mode, drawn in the first colour for one set of atoms and the second for the other where there are two. On the right, the atoms moved by a small multiple of those displacements. The group of the right-hand pattern is p31m, of index 2 in the parent, and it was found by the detector from the point set alone. The prediction — which operations carry the displacement field to itself — is made separately, from the mode and not from the points, and the two lists of operations are identical.

Into space

An order parameter is a representation

The quantity that measures a lost symmetry is not a number the physics chooses freely: the parent group mixes its components, so it carries a representation, and the symmetry that survives is what leaves its value alone. Every prediction here is checked by moving the atoms and asking the detector.

4mm: which phase depends on where the order parameter points. The plane of a two-dimensional order parameter, with each sampled direction marked by the symmetry that survives when the parameter points that way. The directions along which some operation is preserved are drawn large with a spoke to the centre; the general directions, where nothing survives, are the small faint marks between them. One representation, several phases — and the symmetry does not say which of them a crystal takes. That is decided by terms in an energy, which no symmetry argument supplies: what symmetry supplies is the list a material must choose from.

Into space

Which way the order parameter points

A two-component order parameter has a direction as well as a size, and the symmetry that survives depends on where it points. One representation therefore offers several low-symmetry phases — and symmetry, having produced the list, has nothing to say about which one a crystal takes.

p4m: freezing Γ3 leaves pmg. The same crystal three times. On the left, a pattern with the full symmetry of p4m. In the middle, the displacement each atom takes under the order parameter — the arrows are the mode, drawn in the first colour for one set of atoms and the second for the other where there are two. On the right, the atoms moved by a small multiple of those displacements. The group of the right-hand pattern is pmg, of index 4 in the parent, and it was found by the detector from the point set alone. The prediction — which operations carry the displacement field to itself — is made separately, from the mode and not from the points, and the two lists of operations are identical.

Into space

The cell a zone-boundary mode doubles

An order parameter that alternates from cell to cell keeps only half the translations, so the frozen structure has a cell twice as large and reflections that were never there before. The phases at such a wavevector are ±1, so the whole computation stays in exact integers.

Which order parameters carry a cubic invariant, and therefore cannot grow from zero. Every order parameter of every plane class, with the number of independent cubic invariants it admits. The count is the degree-three coefficient of the Molien series of the representation's image — the same computation the invariant-ring figures make for a different reason — and Landau's condition is that it be zero. Where it is not, a free energy in that order parameter has a term of odd degree, which puts its minimum away from zero the moment the quadratic coefficient does anything at all, so the parameter jumps rather than growing. In the plane exactly two order parameters carry one, and both are the two-dimensional representation of a class with a threefold axis and no sixfold.

What symmetry decides

The cubic term that forbids a continuous change

A crystal may lose a symmetry gradually only if the quantity measuring the loss admits no cubic invariant. Whether it does is the third coefficient of a Molien series — so a question about how a material changes is answered by counting polynomials.

How many components a property may have, at each rank and in each class. One row per plane point group, one column per rank of a fully symmetric property tensor, with the number of independent components in each cell — counted by averaging the tensor over the group index by index, and equal at every entry to the Molien coefficient of that degree. A symmetric property of rank r is a form of degree r, so Neumann's principle and the invariant ring are the same arithmetic in two notations. The last column is the elastic tensor, which is not fully symmetric — symmetric within each pair of indices and under exchanging the pairs — and its counts are not in the table to its left. A property with its own symmetries needs its own average, and that is why the elastic constants are not read off a degree.

What symmetry decides

The parts a property splits into

A symmetric property of rank r is a polynomial of degree r wearing indices, so the number of components a class permits it is a coefficient of an invariant ring's series. The elastic tensor is not a polynomial in disguise, and its counts are not in that table — which is the most useful thing about it.

Which descents change the shape of the cell, and into how many shapes. Each descent the modes produced, with the number of independent strain components the parent class permits and the number the child permits. A transition is ferroelastic exactly when the second is larger — the child leaves alone a distortion the parent moves — and the difference is a spontaneous strain the crystal acquires without being pushed. The count of distinct shapes is the orbit of that strain under the parent, which can be smaller than the number of domains: two domains may differ in something a change of shape cannot show. Every count here is a rank of an averaged set of quadratic forms, computed twice — once by averaging, once from a character.

Symmetry at work

The strain that arrives with the transition

A crystal that loses symmetry usually changes shape, and whether it does is a subtraction: how many strain components the child permits, minus how many the parent did. The difference is a distortion nobody applied, and it is what makes a domain visible in a microscope.

3m → 1: the two directions a wall between domains may take. The difference between the strains of two domains, sampled around a circle of directions: the first colour where that direction is stretched, the second where it is compressed. The two solid lines are the directions where it is neither, and those are the only orientations a straight wall between the two domains can take without straining itself — Sapriel's condition, one dimension down from the planes it is usually written for. There are exactly two, and that is not luck: the two domains are images of one another under the parent group, so their strains have the same area change and their difference changes no area at all. A form that changes no area takes both signs, and its zero set is a pair of directions.

Symmetry at work

The walls a strain permits

Two domains of different shape can only meet along a line neither of them stretches. That condition is a quadratic in a direction, so a pair of domains has exactly two permissible walls — and the reason there are always two rather than sometimes none is that their strains differ by no area at all.

A mode with no dipole, landing in a phase that may have one. Two marks per row: the first is filled when the mode itself carries a dipole — the displacements, weighted by charge, summing to something other than zero — and the second when the class of the phase it produces permits a polarisation at all. A row with the first empty and the second filled is an improper case: nothing about the transition was about becoming polar, and the phase that results may be polar anyway, so a polarisation appears as a side effect at second order in an order parameter that is about something else. The zone-boundary rows are where these occur; at the zone centre in the plane there are none, because the only two-dimensional order parameters available there are the polarisation itself.

Symmetry at work

The polarisation nobody asked for

A mode whose displacements cancel exactly can still leave a phase whose class permits a polarisation. The crystal then becomes polar as a side effect of a transition that was about something else — and in the plane, at the zone centre, the arithmetic says this cannot happen at all.

Three variants, and not one undistorted plane. The three tetragonal variants a cubic parent produces, with the principal stretches of each. Every one of them has the same three numbers in a different order, and the middle one is not one — so none of the three leaves any plane undistorted, and none of them can meet the parent phase across an interface. That is the difficulty the whole of the crystallographic theory of martensite exists to resolve, and it is visible in one column.

Symmetry at work

The plane a deformation leaves alone

Two differently deformed regions can meet across a plane only if that plane is deformed identically from both sides — which forces the two deformations to differ by a rank-one term. Multiplying each side by its own transpose removes the rotation and leaves a condition on a signature: one positive eigenvalue, one negative, one exactly zero. In that form the classical rule that the middle principal stretch must be one is not quoted but derived, and it says that no single variant of a cubic-to-tetragonal transition can meet its parent at all.

$Where the laminate's middle eigenvalue crosses zero. The middle eigenvalue of FᵀF − I for the average deformation of a twinned laminate, against the volume fraction of one variant. At both ends the laminate is a single variant and the value is well away from zero; in between it crosses, twice, and each crossing is a volume fraction at which the laminate can meet the parent phase across a plane. The two roots are complementary, which is the same plate with the two variants exchanged.$ Symmetry at work

The plate that only fits when it is twinned

No single variant of a cubic-to-tetragonal transition can meet its parent across a plane. A fine mixture of two variants can, because its average deformation carries a free parameter — the volume fraction — and that parameter passes through the compatibility condition twice. Sweeping it gives the two fractions, the two habit planes, and one inequality: the plate exists exactly when the two principal stretches satisfy η₁² + η₃² ≤ 2.

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