On three-dimensional space groups

Authors Olaf Delgado Friedrichs, D. Huson, William P. Thurston, J. H. Conway

Publication date 18 November 2001

Published in Beiträge zur Algebra und Geometrie (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/math/9911185, https://eudml.org/doc/233409, http://www.emis.de/journals/BAG/vol.42/no.2/17.html

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zbMATH Keywords

crystallographic groups

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Other geometric groups, including crystallographic groups (20H15)

Abstract: An entirely new and independent enumeration of the crystallographic space groups is given, based on obtaining the groups as fibrations over the plane crystallographic groups, when this is possible. For the 35 ``irreducible groups for which it is not, an independent method is used that has the advantage of elucidating their subgroup relationships. Each space group is given a short ``fibrifold name which, much like the orbifold names for two-dimensional groups, while being only specified up to isotopy, contains enough information to allow the construction of the group from the name.

Review text

An \(n\)-dimensional crystallographic group \(G\) is a discrete cocompact group of isometries of the \(n\)-dimensional Euclidean space. In dimension 2 there are 17 isomorphism types of crystallographic groups (the so-called wallpaper groups) and in dimension 3, there are 219 crystallographic space groups (or 230 if we distinguish between mirror images). The traditional enumeration (as done independently in the 1890's by W.~Barlow, E.~S.~Fedorov and A.~Schönfliess) depends on classifying lattices into 14 Bravais types, distinguished by the symmetries that can be added, and then adjoining such symmetries in all possible ways. The classical work of L.~Bieberbach and H.~Zassenhaus however, provides a general and purely algebraic approach to crystallographic groups in arbitrary dimensions (see e.g. [\textit{L.~S.~Charlap}, Bieberbach groups and flat manifolds (1986; Zbl 0608.53001)]). An abstract group \(G\) is a crystallographic group of dimension \(n\) if and only if \(G\) fits into a short exact sequence \(0\to V\to G\to P\to 1\) where \(P\) (the point-group) is a finite group acting faithfully on a free Abelian subgroup \(V\) of \(G\) of rank \(n\). The third Bieberbach theorem answered Hilbert's 18-th problem by showing that there are, up to isomorphism, only finitely many crystallographic groups of a given dimension. The underlying algebraic ideas were employed to classify the isomorphism types of crystallographic groups. In this perspective, in [\textit{H. Brown, R. Bülow, J. Neubüser, H. Wondratschek, H. Zassenhaus}, Crystallographic groups of four-dimensional space (1978; Zbl 0381.20002)], the two-, three- and (for the first time) four-dimensional crystallographic groups were enumerated (by computer). There are 4783 isomorphism types of crystallographic groups in dimension 4. In the paper under review, the authors present an entirely new and independent enumeration of all space crystallographic groups which can be done by using geometry and some elementary algebra. It is based on obtaining the groups as fibrations over the plane crystallographic groups, when this is possible. For the 35 ``irreducible groups for which it is not, an independent method is used.

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