Tensor coordinate axes

Pseudoscalars with the property T T (where the positive sign applies to proper rotations and the negative sign applies to improper rotations) are also called axial tensors of rank 0, 7 (0)ax. A quantity T with three components 7 7 2 7) that transform like the coordinates x x2 x3 of a point P, that is like the components of the position vector r, so that... 

In order to apply group theory to the physical properties of crystals, we need to study the transformation of tensor components under the symmetry operations of the crystal point group. These tensor components form bases for the irreducible repsensentations (IRs) of the point group, for example x, x2 x3 for 7(1) and the set of infinitesimal rotations Rx Ry Rz for 7(1 )ax. (It should be remarked that although there is no unique way of decomposing a finite rotation R( o n) into the product of three rotations about the coordinate axes, infinitesimal rotations do commute and the vector o n can be resolved uniquely... 

By definition the components of the second-rank Cartesian tensor ax transform under rotation just like the product of coordinates xy (e.q., see Jeffreys, 1961) The motivation for what ensues springs from the observation that the spherical harmonics Ym (0, ft) (where 6, ft) are the polar and azimuthal angles of the unit vector (r/1 r )) can be written in terms of the coordinates (x, y, z) of the vector r, for example,... 

AXa, Aya and Aza are the Cartesian displacement coordinates of atom a in a space fixed Cartesian coordinate system, and i, j and k are the respective unit vectors. Atomic polarizability tensors ax are third-rank tensor quantities which can be written 3 9 rectangular arrays ... 

The second term in Eqs. (9.75) and (9.76), die rotational atomic polarizability tensor reflects the contribution of molecular translation and rigid-body rotation to ax- The inclusion of the six external molecular coordinates in those equations - the diree translations Xy and X2, and the three rotations p, Py and P2, completes die set of molecular coordinates up to 3N. In diis vray polarizability dmivatives are transformed into quantities corresponding to a space-fixed Cartesian coordinate system. As already pointed out in section 4.1, the great advantage of such a step is that the imensity parameters defined in terms of a space-fixed coordinate system are independent on isotopic substitutions provided the symmetry of the molecule is preserved. This will be illustrated with an example in the succeeding section. By analogy with Eq. (9.77), die rotational polarizability tensor can be represented as... 

In this equation ax(v) is the atomic polarizability tensor free from any rotational contribution. Its elements are, however, still interrelated through the dependency condition (9.84). The problem can be solved if a set of bond displacement coordinates [Eqs. (4.96) and (4.97)] instead of atomic displacement coordinates is used. A rotation-free bond polarizability tensor is defined as... 

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