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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Point Group Symmetry Applications: Methods and Tables

Point Group Symmetry Applications: Methods and Tables

Butler, Philip H.

Paperback

Technology & EngineeringPhysics

ISBN10: 1461331439
ISBN13: 9781461331438
Publisher: Springer Nature
Published: Oct 17 2011
Pages: 576
Weight: 1.69
Height: 1.17 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
The mathematical apparatus of group theory is a means of exploring and exploiting physical and algebraic structure in physical and chemical prob- lems. The existence of structure in the physical processes leads to structure in the solutions. For group theory to be useful this structure need not be an exact symmetry, although as examples of exact symmetries we have that the identity of electrons leads to permutation symmetries in many-electron wave functions, the spatial structure of crystals leads to the Bloch theory of crystal eigenfunctions, and the rotational invariance of the hydrogenic Hamiltonian leads to its factorization into angular and radial parts. In the 1930's Wigner extended what is known to mathematicians as the theory of group representations and the theory of group algebras to study the coupling coefficients of angular momentum, relating various properties of the coefficients to the properties of the abstract group of rotations in 3-space. In 1949 Racah, in a paper on rare earth spectra, showed that similar coefficients occur in other situations. Immediately a number of studies of the coefficients were begun, notably by Jahn, with his applications in nuclear physics. In the years since then a large number of physicists and chemists have added to the development of a general theory of the coefficients, or have produced specialized tables for a specific application. Applications now range from high-energy physics to biology.

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