INVESTIGATION OF THE SYMMETRIES OF THE PLANE GROUP *442 JESSICA CONNOR

Date: March 10, 2011.

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1. Introduction *442 is the orbifold notation of a wallpaper group that describes the symmetries in the group. This is also referred to as a plane symmetry group which is a mathematical classication of a two-dimensional repetitive pattern across a plane. From the denition of a wallpaper group, this pattern is invariant under linear combinations of two linearly independent translations that repeat at regular intervals in two directions, hence mapping across an innite plane. Wallpaper groups categorise patterns by their symmetries, with there being 17 distinct groups in total. This project aims to investigate the symmetries of *442 using Maple to generate diagrams, add colourings and patterns in order to visually demonstrate such symmetries, both within a fundamental region and across a plane. 1.1. Orbifold Notation. J. H. Conway introduced orbifold notation for wallpaper groups, which is based on the idea of folding the innite periodic tiling of the plane, i.e. folding the innite repetitive pattern into its essence, an orbifold, and describing this using numbers and symbols. This breaks *442 into [1]: An asterisk, *, indicates a mirror symmetry, i.e. a reection through any line. 4,4,2 indicate the presence of two 4-fold rotations, i.e. a rotation by 90 and one 2-fold rotation, i.e. a rotation by 180 . As the numbers come after the *, this means that the rotation centres are at the intersection of mirror lines.

Figure 1. *442 symmetries [2]

2. Fundamental Domain The fundamental domain of a periodic pattern is the smallest region of the plane whose images, under the full symmetry group of the pattern, cover the plane. From the above image it can be seen that the fundamental domain of *442 is given by an eighth of a square, an isosceles right-angled triangle. 2.1. Generators and Relations. Through plotting such a triangle in Maple (D1, see Maple worksheet) we can begin to investigate how the generators of the group *442, s, t, u, act upon it to produce an innite pattern. Firstly, s, t, u need to be identied such that the following relations are satised: s2 = t2 = u2 = 1, (tu)2 = (us)4 = (st)4 = 1
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As s, t, u are of order 2, they can be recognised as the reections of the group, where tu and us = st give the 2-fold and 4-fold rotations respectively. Thus the axes of reection are inclined to each other by 45 so that four axes of reection pass through the centres of the 4-fold rotations. In fact, all of the rotation centres lie on the reection axes [3]. 2.2. The Subgroup of Direct Isometries. Considering the generators, the subgroup of direct isometries can be demonstrated in Maple using s, t and compositions of these. All isometries of the plane and in particular all the elements of *442 are one of the following: Translations Reections Rotations Glide reections Each of these are demonstrated in the Maple worksheet by applying them to the fundamental domain (D1 ) and also can be seen in Figure ?? above. 2.3. Lattice Type. Using the procedure List, a list of words is built up from the letters s, t in order to generate all such compositions that will give the fundamental region for the translation group. This region is a square, and is often described as the lattice type of the group. This fundamental region diers from the triangle fundamental domain in that the vectors which form the sides of the square generate the translation group of the pattern, not the symmetry group, such that translations in two dierent directions will give the whole pattern of all translations in *442 [4]. The symmetries within the square can be easily visualised by placing a shape within the fundamental domain and following where this is mapped. 3. Use of Third Generator In identifying u, the generator which gives the reection in the third side of the fundamental domain, it can now be seen how the symmetries will be mapped outwith the square and across the plane. 3.1. Symmetries across the plane. In order to generate a portion of the pattern from the innite plane, rst a procedure must be used to nd all lists of s, t, u of any given length N. This is given in the Maple worksheet by biglist, where ext removes consecutive identical elements, as it can be seen from the relations that these will give the identity. In a similar way to before, the lists of words are then translated into the corresponding composition of maps and the identity is added, so that when applied to D1 the symmetries map across the plane. 3.2. Removing Duplicates. As the length of all lists of s, t, u increases by changing N, the images which are generated subsequently take longer to produce. This is a result of the many duplicates which are produced as dierent, yet equivalent, compositions map to the same position and are hence displayed on top of each other. In the Maple worksheet, the procedure removed addresses this problem by identifying such compositions and removing them from the list.
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In the table below, it can be seen how this procedure reduces the time to produce images by simply reducing the number of elements (nops) in the list. nops 766 97 Time 2.156 0.095

Before removed After removed

4. Application of Colour As N increases and a larger portion of the plane is generated, it can be dicult to visualise the symmetries within the pattern. As discussed earlier, plotting a dierent shape within the fundamental domain demonstrates this quite eectively, however using symmetric colourings can also be very descriptive (as well being pretty!). 4.1. Symmetric Colourings. A symmetric colouring of the pattern is one such that each of the generators permutes the colours in some way. This is demonstrated by the procedure Cperm, which is applied to the fundamental domain, and across the plane, to perform the colour alteration. The order of each colour transformation is the same as the order of the respective generator (of the planar transformation), thus the change of colours does not aect the symmetries of group *442. For example, two points that have the same colour before the change, also have the same colour after the change [5]. Consequently, 3-colourings cannot be applied to *442 as there are no transformations of order 3 within the symmetry group. 5. Wallpaper Group 442 Although 442 is a distinct wallpaper group, it is the most closely related to *442 and so investigating this helps to explain how and why *442 is a wallpaper group in its own right. In the Maple worksheet, patterns involving 442 symmetry have been generated using the same methods as used for *442, however they originate from a dierent set of generators a, b, c that satisfy the following relations: a2 = b4 = c4 = 1, abc = 1 Thus a, b, c can be identied as two 4-fold rotations (90 ), and one 2-fold rotation (180 ). The group 442 therefore has no reections or glide reections and it is in this way that it diers from *442. 6. Conclusion The Maple worksheet visually displays the dierences between 442 and *442 with a wallpaper generated for each of them. There are many decorative examples of such wallpapers which can be found day to day in clothes/carpets etc. and also many artistic examples online, with each wallpaper group transforming a pattern innitely in its own unique way.
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References
[1] Lee, Xah. (1997) The 17 Wallpaper Groups http://xahlee.org/Wallpaper_dir/c5_17WallpaperGroups.html [Accessed 08 March 2011] [2] Schattschneider, Doris. (June-July 1978) The Plane Symmetry Groups: Their Recognition and Notation The American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 85, No. 6, p.439-450 [3] Joyce, David.E. 1997 Wallpaper Groups http://www.clarku.edu/~djoyce/wallpaper/seventeen.html [Accessed 10 March 2011] [4] Maple Worksheet. Plane Symmetries [5] Wikipedia. Wallpaper Group http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallpaper_group [Accessed 10 March 2011]