Wallpaper Group - Formal Definition and Discussion

Formal Definition and Discussion

Mathematically, a wallpaper group or plane crystallographic group is a type of topologically discrete group of isometries of the Euclidean plane that contains two linearly independent translations.

Two such isometry groups are of the same type (of the same wallpaper group) if they are the same up to an affine transformation of the plane. Thus e.g. a translation of the plane (hence a translation of the mirrors and centres of rotation) does not affect the wallpaper group. The same applies for a change of angle between translation vectors, provided that it does not add or remove any symmetry (this is only the case if there are no mirrors and no glide reflections, and rotational symmetry is at most of order 2).

Unlike in the three-dimensional case, we can equivalently restrict the affine transformations to those that preserve orientation.

It follows from the Bieberbach theorem that all wallpaper groups are different even as abstract groups (as opposed to e.g. Frieze groups, of which two are isomorphic with Z).

2D patterns with double translational symmetry can be categorized according to their symmetry group type.