English

Generalized Space Groups from Internal Configuration Spaces

Materials Science 2026-08-04 v1

Abstract

We develop a unified construction of generalized space groups for crystals with unconventional internal degrees of freedom. Starting from the full group GPG_P of allowed internal transformations and the stabilizer PP of a reference object, we determine the pointwise and setwise symmetries, JJ and KK, of the allowed configuration set. Goursat's lemma then couples the internal quotient K/JK/J to a spatial quotient. The framework includes ordinary, magnetic, spin, and color space groups as special cases. As an example, we consider a dodecahedral object with P=IA5P=I\simeq A_5, for which we obtain the nontrivial pair TOT\triangleleft O with O/TZ2O/T\simeq\mathbb Z_2. The resulting generalized space group hosts a point node with topological charge C=12|C|=12.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2608.03808,
  title  = {Generalized Space Groups from Internal Configuration Spaces},
  author = {Zeying Zhang and Zhenye Li and Zhi-Ming Yu and Gui-Bin Liu and Yugui Yao},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2608.03808},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

6 pages, 2 figures