MT201 2025 Even Semester Tutorial 3
Course Instructor: Dr. Sumanth Nani Enugala
Question 1: In 3D, is 6-fold rotation a member of the 6̄ group?
• Start filling up the Cayley Table of the 6̄ group and see if you will ever hit a generator
of the 6 group. This will settle the issue.
• Now draw the stereogram of the 6̄ group and see whether a 6-fold axis’ action on the
generic point is included in it or not. This way also this issue can be settled.
• Which method do you think is faster and easier?
• How about a 3-fold rotation? Is it present in the 6̄ group?
Question 2: Except for the last 5 entries in the ‘Generators of the 32 Cyrstallographic
Point Groups’ document I shared with you, for all the others, draw their stereographic pro-
jections using appropriate symbols: Filled versions of lens, triangle, square, and hexagon
are the symbols for the 2-, 3-, 4-, and 6- fold rotation axis, respectively. The same symbols
with small unfilled circular regions at their centres are for their roto-inversion counterparts.
Finally, thick solid lines are for the mirror planes. The two ends of a rotation axis when it
lies along X or Y axis can be joined using a dashed line, and the guide lines can be drawn
using dashed line if you want to incorporate them.
Question 3: Take the hexagonal lattice in 2D. What are all the symmetry elements in the
crystallographic point group associated with it? What are the subgroups of this group? We
know that if we attach a motif to a lattice, the symmetry of the net structure either remains
the same as that of the lattice or gets lowered (it can of course change but we carefully
avoid this in crystallography). So draw the hexagonal lattice and a few motifs over it such
that the symmetry goes from that of the full group to that of the various subgroups as you
go from one motif to the other.
Question 4: There is a crystal whose full point group symmetry is 6/mmm.
a) How many directions are equivalent to the [1 3 3] direction in the crystal, and what are
they (you can leave the answer in the 4-index notation itself)?
b) Draw the Stereogram of the 6/mmm group and cross check that indeed the number of
directions equivalent to a generic direction like [1 3 3] is consistent with what you got in a).
The 6/mmm group is generated by one 6-fold axis, a mirror plane perpendicular to it, and
two 2-fold axes lying in the said mirror plane perpendicular to each other.
c) List all the directions from the ⟨113⟩ family. Are the number of all these equivalent di-
rections consistent with what is predicted from the stereogram? Demonstrate by explicitly
drawing the relevant stereogram here.
Question 5: A monolayer of MoS2 has 6̄2m crystallographic point group symmetry. One
set of generators for this group consists of a 6-fold roto-inversion axis and a perpendicular
2-fold axis. Given the crystallographic directions [5 1̄ 4̄ 3̄], [2 1̄ 1̄ 3], and [2 1̄ 1̄ 0], how many
distinct directions are there in the families ⟨5 1̄ 4̄ 3̄⟩, ⟨2 1̄ 1̄ 3⟩, and ⟨2 1̄ 1̄ 0⟩?