Appendix D - Group Theory

Introduction

''Symmetry, as wide or as narrow as you may define its meaning, is one idea by which man through the ages has tried to comprehend and create order, beauty and perfection.''

Hermann Weyl

Symmetry arguments have been used widely in mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, computer science, engineering, and elsewhere. Group theory can be an organizational tool which is invaluable, whether it is used explicitly or implicitly, in many areas of the sciences.

In physics, symmetry principles are often used to describe what changes and what does not in a physical system undergoing some particular transformation. For example, if a knob is turned in an experiment and nothing changes, then that is an invariant of the system and thus indicates a symmetry. (Of course, the trivial case where the knob has nothing to do with the experiment-for example the machine with the knob is unplugged-should be excluded.) The objective here is to explain group theory with this practical viewpoint in mind. and the idea is for this motivation to be kept in mind throughout these notes.

It is perhaps worth noting that very general things tend to need to be abstract. And so it with group theory. However, to reiterate, the objective here is to be as concrete as possible with the emphasis on physical applications. In this regard, it is worth mentioning that, directly or indirectly, Michael Tinkham's book on group theory very much influenced these notes.

Definitions and Examples

Definition: A group ${\mathcal {G}}\,\!$ is a set of objects, $\{A,B,C,...\}\,\!$ together with a composition rule between them, (denoted $\circ \,\!$ here and called a product or multiplication) such that the following are satisified:

1. $(A\circ B)\circ C=A\circ (B\circ C)\,\!$. ($\circ \,\!$ is associative.)
2. If $A\in {\mathcal {G}}\,\!$ and $B\in {\mathcal {G}}\,\!$, then their product $A\circ B\in {\mathcal {G}}\,\!$. (The set is closed under multiplication.)
3. There is an element $\mathbb {I} \in {\mathcal {G}}\,\!$ such that, for all $A\in {\mathcal {G}}\,\!$, $\mathbb {I} A=A=A\mathbb {I} \,\!$. (${\mathcal {G}}\,\!$ contains the identity element.)
4. For all $A\in {\mathcal {G}}\,\!$ there exists an element $A^{-1}\in {\mathcal {G}}\,\!$ such that $AA^{-1}=\mathbb {I} =A^{-1}A\,\!$.

In the provided examples, the objective is to make the direct connection between a group and a set of symmetries of an object. The objective is to argue that a set of symmetries forms a group (supposing that an appropriate product rule is given) since it satisfies all the conditions in the definition.

Example 1

Consider a line segment of length 2 cm with midpoint at zero. Suppose the end points are located at $\pm 1\,\!$ cm of the x-axis. If the line segment were rotated 180$^{o}\,\!$ about any line perpendicular to the segment, it would look like the same line segment. (Let us be definite and choose the axis perpendicular to the x-y plane after choosing x and y axes.) What this would do is exchange the two ends. The set of points $\pm 1\,\!$ could be acted upon by an operator which exchanges the two. This rotation operation can be represented by multiplication by $-1\,\!$. Then, there are two elements in the set of operations to consider. The first is do nothing represented by $1\,\!$. (This, of course, is the identity operation $\mathbb {I} \,\!$ for this group.) The other element is $-1\,\!$. Thus, representing multiplication by $\circ \,\!$, we have a group with the set $\{+1,-1\}\,\!$ and operation $\circ \equiv \times \,\!$. Clearly the product is associative (it is multiplication), the set contains the identity, products are either $+1\,\!$ or $-1\,\!$ which are both in the group so it satisfies the closure property, and there are inverses, the inverse of $-1\,\!$ is $-1\,\!$. In fact this is the simplest group.

Example 2

Consider an equilateral triangle with sides of length 1 cm say. Its center will be at the origin of the x-y plan and will be have vertices placed at the following points: $(0,1/{\sqrt {3}})\,\!$, $(1/2,-1/(2{\sqrt {3}})\,\!$, $(-1/2,-1/(2{\sqrt {3}})\,\!$. Now consider the following operations on the triangle: a rotation of 0$^{o}\,\!$ (do nothing), a rotation of 120$^{o}\,\!$, a rotation of 240$^{o}\,\!$, and a reflection about the $x\,\!$ axis. One way to identify all possible configurations of the triangle that leave the triangle looking the same, is to identify the vertices. There are six possible choices for the positions of the vertices. Let us name them 1,2,3. Then, reading counter-clockwise from the top, we can have $P_{0}=(1,2,3)\,\!$, $P_{2}=(3,1,2)\,\!$, $P_{4}=(2,3,1)\,\!$, $P_{1}=(1,3,2)\,\!$, $P_{3}=(3,2,1)\,\!$, $P_{5}=(2,1,3)\,\!$. If we take the first of these, $P_{0}\,\!$ to be the original configuration, shown in Fig.~(\ref{fig:triangle}), then each of the first three of these are a rotation from the original configuration. Each of the last three is obtained from a reflection combined with a rotation. To be explicit, let us consider the following operations:

	$\mathbb {I} _{2}=\left({\begin{array}{cc}1&0\\0&1\end{array}}\right),R_{1}=\left({\begin{array}{cc}-1/2&-{\sqrt {3}}/2\\{\sqrt {3}}/2&-1/2\end{array}}\right),\;\;R_{2}=\left({\begin{array}{cc}-1/2&{\sqrt {3}}/2\\-{\sqrt {3}}/2&-1/2\end{array}}\right),\;\;r=\left({\begin{array}{cc}-1&0\\0&1\end{array}}\right),\,\!$	(D.1)

where $R_{1}\,\!$ is a rotation of the x-y plane by $120^{o}\,\!$, $R_{2}\,\!$ is a rotation of the x-y plane by $240^{o}\,\!$, and $r\,\!$ is a reflection about the y-axis. In addition to these operations, two others must be included to complete the set,

	$r_{1}=rR_{1}=\left({\begin{array}{cc}1/2&{\sqrt {3}}/2\\{\sqrt {3}}/2&-1/2\end{array}}\right),\;\;r_{2}=rR_{2}=\left({\begin{array}{cc}1/2&-{\sqrt {3}}/2\\-{\sqrt {3}}/2&-1/2\end{array}}\right),\;\;\,\!$	(D.2)

where $rR_{1}\,\!$ means $r\circ R_{1}\,\!$, but the $\circ \,\!$ has been dropped since this is ordinary matrix multiplication. This group will be used as an example for several group properties and is called $S_{3}\,\!$. The products of these elements are summarized in Table~\ref{Table:S3}, which is called the multiplication table for the group. The multiplication table will be discussed repeatedly throughout this appendix due to its importance in group theory. It would be advisable to stare at it for some time to see what patterns can be identified. The meaning of these patterns will be discussed later.