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A compound of aluminium and phosphorus, with two chemical atoms per primitive unit cell in its usual zinc blende structure. Its two inequivalent atomic basis sites give six phonon branches, three acoustic and three optical.

There are two chemical atoms in the primitive unit cell, hence six displacement coordinates and six phonon branches at each wavevector. Three rigid translations cost no restoring potential energy in the long-wavelength limit. ConsequentlyFor propagation along $[100]$, one acoustic phonon has longitudinal polarization along $x$ and two have transverse polarization along $y,z$. The cubic crystal symmetry makes those two transverse directions equivalent. In terms of the elastic stiffness tensor and the mass density,Thus there are two distinct acoustic velocities in general, one longitudinal and a doubly degenerate transverse value. This degeneracy of normal modes concerns the two transverse polarizations; it does not imply equality with the longitudinal speed of sound.

The primitive unit cell contains two carbon atoms and four edge-shared oxygen atoms, each contributing one half: $n=2+4/2=4$ atoms. Equivalently, one molecular repeat contributes its two carbon atoms but only half of each of its four shared oxygen atoms. There are therefore $3n=12$ phonon branches.

At the Brillouin zone centre, three rigid translations give three acoustic phonon branches; the remaining $3n-3$ are optical phonon branches:A free layer has two in-plane acoustic modes and an out-of-plane flexural acoustic mode. A two-dimensional lattice does not imply that its atoms can move only in two directions. Artificially suppressing all out-of-plane motion would instead define a different model with two acoustic and six optical branches.