Symmetry Considerations and Examples
A lattice is the symmetry group of discrete translational symmetry in n directions. A pattern with this lattice of translational symmetry cannot have more, but may have less symmetry than the lattice itself. As a group (dropping its geometric structure) a lattice is a finitely-generated free abelian group.
A lattice in the sense of a 3-dimensional array of regularly spaced points coinciding with e.g. the atom or molecule positions in a crystal, or more generally, the orbit of a group action under translational symmetry, is a translate of the translation lattice: a coset, which need not contain the origin, and therefore need not be a lattice in the previous sense.
A simple example of a lattice in is the subgroup . A more complicated example is the Leech lattice, which is a lattice in . The period lattice in is central to the study of elliptic functions, developed in nineteenth century mathematics; it generalises to higher dimensions in the theory of abelian functions.
Read more about this topic: Lattice (group)
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