Intermediate symmetry

Abstract

In quantum mechanical situations possessing symmetry, information may be obtained about degeneracies of states by considering the symmetry group H concerned. In the present paper it is shown that in certain cases extra information about matrix elements may be deduced by working in a suitably chosen larger group G containing H. The situation is then said to possess a symmetry intermediate between H and G. Applications are made to ligand fields arising from octahedral and tetrahedral coordination, when the attached ligands are not necessarily all the same.