Molecular point group, from crystal

To describe the contents of a unit cell, it is sufficient to specify the coordinates of only one atom in each equivalent set of atoms, since the other atomic positions in the set are readily deduced from space group symmetry. The collection of symmetry-independent atoms in the unit cell is called the asymmetric unit of the crystal structure. In the International Tables, a portion of the unit cell (and hence its contents) is designated as the asymmetric unit. For instance, in space group P2 /c, a quarter of the unit cell within the boundaries 0asymmetric unit. Note that the asymmetric unit may be chosen in different ways in practice, it is preferable to choose independent atoms that are connected to form a complete molecule or a molecular fragment. It is also advisable, whenever possible, to take atoms whose fractional coordinates are positive and lie within or close to the octant 0 < x < 1/2,0 < y < 1/2, and 0 < z < 1 /2. Note also that if a molecule constitutes the asymmetric unit, its component atoms may be related by non-crystallographic symmetry. In other words, the symmetry of the site at which the molecule is located may be a subgroup of the idealized molecular point group. 

Hartree-Fock calculations on molecules commonly exploit the symmetry of the molecular point group to simplify calculations such studies on perfectly ordered bulk crystalline solids are possible if one exploits the translational symmetry of the crystalline lattice (see Ashcroft and Mermin, 1976) as well as the local symmetry of the unit cell. From orbitals centered on various nuclei within the unit cell of the crystal Bloch orbitals are generated, as given by the formula (in one dimension) ... 

Table 1.2 Results of a query from CSDSymmetry, showing the ten molecular point groups (with more than 30 occurrences in the CSD) that give rise most often to noncentrosymmetric crystal structures. Reproduced from [28] by permission of the International Union of Crystallography...

Curie understood that under stress, or in the presence of external electric or magnetic fields, the symmetry of a system is changed. The Neumann principle still applies but should no longer be based on the symmetry of the isolated crystal, but on that of the combined system of crystal and external field, as we have considered in Sect. 3.9. In the case of ammonia, application of an electric field has the Coov symmetry of a polar vector. The symmetry that results from the superposition of the field with the molecular point group 3 depends on the orientation (see Appendix B). In the coordinate frame of Fig. 3.1 one has ... 

Figure 15.6 Various representations of the molecular structure of ryclc-Si2 showing S atoms in three parallel planes. I he idealized point group symmetry is and the mean dihedral angle is 86.1 5.5 . In the crystal the symmetry is slightly distorted to C21, and the central group of 6 S atoms deviate from eoplanarily by 14pm.

However, its was found possible to infer all four microscopic tensor coefficients from macroscopic crystalline values and this impossibility could be related to the molecular unit anisotropy. It can be shown that the molecular unit anisotropy imposes structural relations between coefficients of macroscopic nonlinearities, in addition to the usual relations resulting from crystal symmetry. Such additional relations appear for crystal point group 2,ra and 3. For the monoclinic point group 2, this relation has been tested in the case of MAP crystals, and excellent agreement has been found, triten taking into account crystal structure data (24), and nonlinear optical measurements on single crystal (19). This approach has been extended to the electrooptic tensor (4) and should lead to similar relations, trtten the electrooptic effect is primarily of electronic origin. 

Crystal lattices can be depicted not only by the lattice translation defined in Eq. (7.2), but also by the performance of various point symmetry operations. A symmetry operation is defined as an operation that moves the system into a new configuration that is equivalent to and indistinguishable from the original one. A symmetry element is a point, line, or plane with respect to which a symmetry operation is performed. The complete ensemble of symmetry operations that define the spatial properties of a molecule or its crystal are referred to as its group. In addition to the fundamental symmetry operations associated with molecular species that define the point group of the molecule, there are additional symmetry operations necessary to define the space group of its crystal. These will only be briefly outlined here, but additional information on molecular symmetry [10] and solid-state symmetry [11] is available. 

Finally it may be concluded that both the above mentioned treatments should be used jointly in all studies dealing with JTE problems. The group-theoretical treatments enable to extend the applications from molecular systems (described by point groups) up to crystals and phase transitions (described by space groups). Further studies in this field should bring valuable results and solve the recent theoretical problems as well. 

Going from the molecular picture to that of collective properties in a solid means adding translational symmetry to the point group symmetry. The theoretical description does this by introducing a phase of the distortion throughout the material, which is determined by the spatial variation of the variously distorted molecules. If, as is usual in a classical crystal, the phase of the distortion shows the translational symmetry of the solid, the so-called cooperative Jahn-Teller effect appears where the shape of one molecule and the space group determines the shape of all the others. If the distortions are not correlated, however, the phase is random and the situation is not different from that of isolated molecules. This is the dynamic Jahn-Teller effect where the distortions cannot be detected but the solid-state consequences still appear in the electronic structure [16]. 

---