CHEMISTRY 689

Intro. to Symmetry and Group Theory in Chemistry

Tim Hughbanks

★ B.S. in Chemistry, U. of Washington, 1977

★ Ph.D., Cornell, 1983
★ Faculty member at TAMU since 1987
★ Office: Chemistry Building, Room 330
★ Office phone: 845-0215
★ Office Hrs: Tues. 2:00 - 4:00 PM
• Other times are OK too!
★ e-mail: trh@mail.chem.tamu.edu
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 CHEMISTRY 673 lite

★ This course is for 32 credits.

★ Lecture: 2 × 7550 min/week; TTh 12:45 -
2:001:35, Room 2121

CHEMISTRY 689

★ Grades will be based on the homework

(roughly 33%), midterm and final exams
★ Class web site: http://www.chem.tamu.edu/
rgroup/hughbanks/courses/673/
chem673.html

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 Required Books, etc.
★ “Molecular Symmetry and Group Theory,” by
Carter, Wiley, 1998.
• close to the right level but only loosely followed
• early, my notes tend to follow Cotton, but I deviate
from both in the 2nd half
★ “Symmetry and Spectroscopy; An
Introduction...”, by Harris & Bertolucci, Dover,
1989.
• informal, supplies missing physical background
(goes further than I will, useful for Chem 634) 5

Other Books
★ “Chemical Applications of Group Theory” by
F. Albert Cotton.
• An alternative textbook – level is similar to
Carter; you can use this as long as you can
occasionally get access to Carter’s book
★ “Group Theory and Quantum Mechanics” by
Tinkham.
• More difficult than Cotton, but probably the most
accessible of books written for physicists
• Has a chapter on solids, band theory (k-space) 6
 Prerequisites

★ Undergraduate chemistry courses, especially

inorganic and physical chemistry
★ Usual math courses for scientists, especially
linear algebra.
★ No linear algebra? Familiarity with vectors and
matrices acquired elsewhere (handouts!) may
suffice — don’t wait to review these topics, do
so this week! - Minimum background: Appendix
in Cotton’s text.
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Mathematics helps (sometimes)

http://xkcd.com/c242.html 8
 Reading

★ Please try to keep ahead in reading

★ This will allow me to avoid much
mathematical detail in class. This is
desirable because theorems and proofs
become tedious - even when obvious!
★ Download and read the material on
Determinants and Matrices from the web.

First Problem Sets

• The first two problem sets, #1a and #1b, are

posted on the class web site.
• Problem Set 1a is math. I won’t spend
much time on it, but I’m willing to reserve
a room for Thursday night to help out
people who are feeling lost.
• The grading weights on the problem sets
are anticipated to be: 1a: 3%, 1b – 5: 6%
each, 33% total.
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 What is Group Theory?

★ A fairly “recent” branch of mathematics. Early

principles were developed by Évariste Galois
(killed in a duel in 1832 at age 20), and Niels
Abel (died in 1829 at age 26 of TB).
★ First formal definition of a group was given by
Cayley in 1854. Cayley, Hamilton, and
Sylvester laid out fundamentals of matrices
matrix groups.
★ Fedorov: application to crystallography.
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Fedorov
★ 1890: Fedorov developed
the mathematical
technique for expressing
combinations of symmetry
operations; this led to his
proof of 230 space groups.
★ Fedorov died in 1919
during the Russian civil
war (revolution) of
pneumonia/starvation. Evgraf Stepanovich Fedorov
1853 - 1919 12
 Schönflies
★ 1891: Independently of
Fedorov, Schönflies used
group theory to prove that
there are exactly 230 space
groups of symmetries
governing crystal structures
(in "Krystallsysteme and
Krystallstruktur") and
introduced the Schönflies
symbols there. Arthur Moritz Schönflies
13 1853 - 1928

Too Old for this S**t

http://xkcd.com/447/

They say if a mathematician doesn’t do their

great work by age eleven, they never will
 ... What’s Beyond?
★ In 1873, Marius Sophus Lie began research into
the theory of ‘Lie groups’ (continuous groups
only peripherally alluded to in this course).
• “At that time, mathematicians felt that they had
finally invented something of no possible use to
natural scientists. However...” Robert Gilmore, Lie
Groups Lie Algebras and Some of Their Applications
★ Group Theory is the closest many chemists get to
truly “modern” mathematics.
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“The universe is an enormous direct

product of representations of symmetry
groups.” – Steven Weinberg1

1Steven Weinberg, Sheldon Glashow, and Abdus Salam

were awarded the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics for their
incorporation of the weak and electromagnetic ‘forces’
into a single theory.
 Properties of Groups

★ Closure: “product” of any two group

elements (operations) is a group element
(operation), including squares
★ One element, the identity, commutes with
all others
★ Associative property holds (commutative
property does not necessarily hold)
★ Every element (operation) has an inverse —
which is also a group element (operation)
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Simple Examples

★ The integers, under the operation of

addition?
★ The integers, under the operation of
multiplication?
★ Relevant Example: A simple symmetry
group, C2v
• what are the elements (operations)?
• how do we define a product?

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 Another Relevant Example:
Rotation Matrices

‣ Claim: The set of all 2×2 matrices of the form

⎡ cosθ − sin θ ⎤
⎢⎣ sin θ cosθ ⎥⎦
forms an continuous, infinite-order group,
where the product is assumed to be defined by
the usual definition of matrix multiplication.
‣ Proof ? Geometric Interpretation?
‣ The group is called SO(2), the Special
Orthogonal Group of order 2 19

Symmetry Elements vs.

Operations

★ Mathematically, the members of a group are

called “elements”
★ In symmetry groups these “elements” are
called “operations” - the term “element” is
reserved for something else:
★ The term “symmetry element” refers to a
geometrical entity (a point, a line or axis, or
a plane) about which the operation is
defined.
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 The Symmetry Operations

★ Reflection (in a plane) σ

★ Inversion (through a point) i
★ Rotation (about a proper axis) Cn
- through an angle 2π/n
★ Improper Rotation Sn
(about an improper axis)
★ Identity (do nothing) E
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S1 , S2 are just σ and i

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 Defining Properties

★ The product of any two elements in the

group and the square of each element must
be an element in the group.
★ One element in the group must commute
with all others and leave them unchanged.
★ The associative law of multiplication must
hold

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Defining Properties, cont.

★ Every element must have a reciprocal, which

is also an element of the group.
★ The reciprocal of a product of two or more
elements is equal to the product of the
reciprocals, in reverse order.
−1
(AB) = B A −1 −1 (AB)B −1 A −1
A(BB −1 )A −1
(ABC )−1 = C −1B −1 A −1
= AA −1 = E
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 Multiplication Tables,
Rearrangement Theorem

★ Each row and each column in the group

multiplication table lists each of the group
elements once and only once. (Why must
this be true?) From this, it follows that no
two rows may be identical. Thus each row
and each column is a rearranged list of the
group elements.

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Thesis Defense
 Subgroups

★ A subgroup is a “group within another

group”- a subset of group elements. A
supergroup is a group obtained by adding
new elements to a group (to give a larger
group).
★ The order of any subgroup g of a group of
order h must be a divisor of h:
h = k where k is an integer
g
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Similarity Transforms, Classes

★ A is said to be conjugate with B, if there

exists any element of the group, X, such that
A = X −1BX
(i) Every element is conjugate with itself.
(ii) If A is conjugate with B, then B is
conjugate with A.
(iii) If A is conjugate with B and C, then B and
C are conjugate with each other.
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 Classes, cont.
★ A complete set of elements that are
conjugate to one another within a group is
called a class of the group. The number of
elements in a class is called its order.

★ The orders of all classes must be integral

factors of the order of the group.

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