Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-condensed-matter-physics-major-option-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2015/1/a/solution
Past exam of the condensed matter physics major option course of the University of Oxford 2015 1 a Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-25
A screw axis combines rotation about a line with translation parallel to that line. An screw rotates through and advances by of the lattice repeat along the axis; a screw advances by half a repeat after a half-turn. The combined operation, rather than either component separately, must map every atomic species onto equivalent sites.
A glide plane combines reflection in a plane with a fractional translation parallel to it. Reflecting alone need not preserve the crystal. A crystallographic point symmetry is an isometry with a fixed point, such as a rotation, reflection, inversion, or rotoinversion. Point operations have no irreducible translational advance: a screw or a glide with nonzero fractional advance cannot be described merely as a rotation or mirror at a different origin. A crystal's point group records the rotational parts of its space-group operations, whereas the full space group retains their translations.
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