Symmetry: Group Theory: Mathematical Expression of Symmetry in Physics
Symmetry: Group Theory: Mathematical Expression of Symmetry in Physics
Symmetry: Group Theory: Mathematical Expression of Symmetry in Physics
Article
Group Theory: Mathematical Expression of Symmetry in Physics
Jean-Pierre Antoine
Abstract: The present article reviews the multiple applications of group theory to the symmetry
problems in physics. In classical physics, this concerns primarily relativity: Euclidean, Galilean,
and Einsteinian (special). Going over to quantum mechanics, we first note that the basic principles
imply that the state space of a quantum system has an intrinsic structure of pre-Hilbert space that
one completes into a genuine Hilbert space. In this framework, the description of the invariance
under a group G is based on a unitary representation of G. Next, we survey the various domains of
application: atomic and molecular physics, quantum optics, signal and image processing, wavelets,
internal symmetries, and approximate symmetries. Next, we discuss the extension to gauge theories,
in particular, to the Standard Model of fundamental interactions. We conclude with some remarks
about recent developments, including the application to braid groups.
Keywords: group theory; Lie group; symmetry; representations; quantum physics; elementary
particles; braid groups
1. Prologue
Group theory is nowadays the backbone of elementary particle physics and many
Citation: Antoine, J.-P. Group other domains of physics as well. The obvious connection is, of course, the description of
Theory: Mathematical Expression of symmetries. However, this situation is the consequence of a long chain of evolutionary
Symmetry in Physics. Symmetry 2021, steps, which goes back, in fact, to the highest antiquity, although groups themselves were
13, 1354. https://doi.org/10.3390/
born only in the 19th century. The present paper aims to describe this long history in a
sym13081354
pedagogical, and mathematically non-technical way. Of course, for specialists in the field
of methods of group and symmetry analyses, the information presented in this review
Academic Editor: Michel Planat
is generally known and will appear as superficial. However, for a non-specialist reader
who is interested in the topic of symmetry and its applications, this review may be of
Received: 29 June 2021
some interest. Hence, this is the audience to which the paper is addressed primarily. A
Accepted: 20 July 2021
Published: 26 July 2021
preliminary version may be found in [1].
Ever since the highest antiquity, symmetrical figures were considered more harmo-
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral
nious and more perfect. Examples can be found in all times and all cultures. To mention a
with regard to jurisdictional claims in
few, there are the Egyptian pyramids (3000 BC), several items of Minoan art (18th century
published maps and institutional affil- BC), jewels from the Mycenaean civilization (1000–600 BC), Platonic solids (tetrahedron,
iations. cube (hexahedron), octahedron, dodecahedron, icosahedron), and ubiquitous figures in
Islamic art. A significant example is given by a Mycenaean ornament, shown in Figure 1 [2].
The artist has clearly identified the symmetry of the object, and exploits it for aesthetic
reasons only.
According to Kepler, symmetry properties reflect the harmony of the world, no more.
Copyright: © 2021 by the author.
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
However, their systematic study required a mathematical level that was available only at
This article is an open access article
the end of the 19th century), namely group theory, essentially invented by E. Galois. The
distributed under the terms and
theory rapidly enjoyed remarkable developments, thanks to such authors as G. Frobenius,
conditions of the Creative Commons I. Schur, W. Burnside, E. Cartan and H. Weyl. A survey of the theory can be found in the
Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// textbooks of Loebl [3] or Gilmore [4]. For a survey of the applications to physics, we refer
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ the reader to the review [5].
4.0/).
Figure 1. An antique example: symmetry of order 6 in a Mycenaean ornament. (left) The ornament.
(right) Its symmetries (from [2]).
As for the organization of the paper, after a quick reminder of the relevant notions, we
begin with the symmetries in classical physics, focusing on the various theories of relativity
and their mutual relationship. Next, we turn to symmetries in quantum physics. After
reviewing the basic principles, we examine, successively, atomic and molecular physics,
quantum optics, signal processing and wavelets. Then, we turn to internal symmetries,
culminating in the standard model of fundamental interactions and gauge theories. Finally
we examine some recent developments, touching upon Kac–Moody algebras and braid
groups, with a possible application in quantum computing. More than 40 references
are given.
Group theory first entered physics with crystallography at the end of the 19th century.
Given an arbitrary crystal, it is an easy exercise to figure out all symmetry operations that
leave it unaffected: reflection through certain planes, inversion with respect to the center,
rotations around given axes through the center (only the angles 2π/n, with n = 2, 3, 4 or
6, will be compatible with the periodicity of the crystalline lattice), or any combination
of these. A systematic investigation shows there exist exactly 32 different combinations
of symmetry properties; accordingly, crystals are subdivided into 32 crystal classes. For a
given class, the symmetry operations form a group with a finite number of elements, called
a point group. Combining these with the lattice translations for each of the 14 different types
of (Bravais) lattices, one then obtains the 230 space groups, a remarkable achievement, due
to Fedorov (1885) and Schönflies (1891). This result is, of course, purely classical, but it
illustrates the primordial rôle of group theory in physics, namely, to organize data in a
rational fashion.
2. A Gentle Reminder
It may be useful to remind the reader of the basic definitions of the objects we will
meet in the following, without any pretension of mathematical rigor. A group is a set G
equipped with an internal composition law ( g, g0 ) 7→ gg0 , called product, such that the
following holds:
(i) The product is associative: g1 ( g2 g3 ) = ( g1 g2 ) g3 , ∀ g1 , g2 , g3 ∈ G;
(ii) There exists a neutral element e ∈ G such that eg = ge = g, ∀ g ∈ G, necessarily unique.
(iii) Every element g ∈ G has an inverse g−1 ∈ G (necessarily unique) such that gg−1 =
g−1 g = e.
The group is called abelian or commutative if the product is commutative:
g1 g2 = g2 g1 , ∀ g1 , g2 ∈ G. (1)
A Lie group is a group with a structure of analytic manifolds compatible with the group
structure. This means that the elements g ∈ G can be parameterized, g ≡ g( ϕk ), in such a
way that the group operations are given by the analytic functions of the parameters ϕk .
The Lie algebra g of a Lie group G is the vector space of the vector tangent at the identity.
Geometrically, these are the infinitesimal generators of the group.
Symmetry 2021, 13, 1354 3 of 11
(1) The superposition principle: every linear superposition of two states of a system is a
state, which implies that the state space is intrinsically a vector space.
(2) The transition amplitude between two states is given by a Hermitian sesquilinear form:
A(φin → φout ) = φout φin .
In the same way, the corresponding transition probability is given by the squared
modulus of this amplitude: P(φin → φout ) = |hφout |φin i|2 .
Thus, the state space H0 is a pre-Hilbert space.
(3) The observables of the system are represented by linear Hermitian operators in H0 ,.
Since these in general do not commute, this implies the presence of uncertainty relations.
Thus, one has to rely on a probabilistic interpretation of the theory.
Then, in order to have sufficiently powerful results, von Neumann [11] required in
addition that the state space be complete, that is, a Hilbert space, denoted as H. This allows
to exploit a richer mathematical arsenal: self-adjoint operators, spectral theory, unitary
time evolution, etc. Quite remarkably, it is in that work that von Neumann gave the first
precise definition of Hilbert space.
This is not the end of the story, however. Indeed, the von Neumann formalism is
rigorous, but too cumbersome for most practicing physicists. Instead, they use the so-called
Bra–Ket formalism of Dirac [12]. Here, all points on the spectrum of an observable are treated
on the same footing, whether they belong to the discrete spectrum (eigenvalues) or to the
continuous spectrum. While this is convenient, it is not strictly correct. Yet, there is a way
out: the Dirac formalism may be recovered in a rigorous fashion if one introduces a rigged
Hilbert space (RHS):
Φ ⊂ H ⊂ Φ× . (2)
where Φ is a dense subspace of H, generated by a set of labeled observables, and Φ×
is the conjugate dual of Φ. Under some mathematical conditions on Φ, the Dirac for-
malism is recovered, now rigorously. As for the physical interpretation, the elements
of Φ represent those states that are physically preparable, whereas Φ× contains general-
ized states associated with measurement operations. A full discussion of the sequence
von Neumann → Dirac → RHS can be found in [13–15].
5.3. Crystals
Whereas crystallography was developed in the 19th century at the classical level,
as explained in Section 1, it had to be combined with quantum mechanics in order to
obtain a quantum theory of solids, as initiated in the classical paper of Bouckaert et al.
in 1936 [19]. The problem is that symmetries in a crystal is a world apart from those of
atoms or molecules. Indeed, if the interaction between electrons in a metal is neglected,
the energy spectrum has a zonal structure. These Brillouin zones can also be treated via
group theory. However, whereas the relevant representations form a discrete set in the case
of atoms or molecules, as explained above, the representations of a space group form a
continuous manifold, and must be characterized by continuously varying parameters. It
follows that the energy is a continuous function of the reduced wave vector. Thus, one
justifies the structure of the Brillouin zones. This was the starting point of the quantum
theory of solids (condensed matter), which is now a huge domain in physics.
of the Weyl–Heisenberg group: ( a, a† , I ) ∼ (q, p, I ), where q, p are the position and mo-
mentum operators, respectively. This approach is sufficient for treating a large number of
Hamiltonians at most quadratics. Such Hamiltonians cover a substantial part of quantum
optics, including lasers and other coherent phenomena. The states of such systems are
the well-known (canonical) coherent states. They were introduced by Schrödinger in 1926
as those quantum states that best describe best the classical limit of quantum mechanics.
Yet, they were quickly forgotten, thanks to a disparaging remark of Pauli. However, they
were rediscovered around 1960 by R.J. Glauber, J.R. Klauder and E.C.G. Sudarshan [20] in
the context of the quantum optics description of a coherent light beam emitted by lasers.
Group theory had little to do in this setup, until mathematician Perelomov and physicist
Gilmore, independently, discovered in 1972 that coherent states may be obtained by the
action of a Lie group on a basis vector ψ ∈ H : ψg := U ( g)ψ, g ∈ G, where U is a unitary
representation of the group G. This situation is realized in several well-known examples:
the Weyl–Heisenberg group GWH yields the canonical coherent states; the rotation group
SO(3) yields the spin coherent states; the group SU(1,1) yields the coherent states describing
a particle in an infinite potential well or the squeezed states of an atom, etc. In fact, the
(generalized) coherent states have found applications in almost all domains of physics,
not only quantum optics, but also nuclear and atomic physics, condensed matter physics,
quantum electrodynamics (the infrared problem), quantization and dequantization, path
integrals, etc. A systematic survey can be found in the textbook of J-P. Gazeau [21].
lets, introduced by Kutyniok and her collaborators [25]. The idea is simply to replace the
rotations inherent to the 2D continuous WT by shear operations, which generates extremely
directional wavelets. The interesting fact is that, like the WT, the shearlet transform stems
from a Lie group, called the shearlet group. The resulting transform may then be discretized,
which yields a very powerful tool generalizing the 2D discrete WT.
There are, of course, plenty of books about wavelets, too many to cite here. Two
essential ones are those of Daubechies [26] and Mallat [27]. In addition, we refer to the
compendium [28], which collects all the relevant early papers in the domain. As for the
connection with coherent states, we may quote our textbook [24].
6. Internal Symmetries
6.1. Discrete Symmetries
All the symmetries we have met so far pertain to Lie groups, thus are continuous,
even analytic. Yet, there are also some discrete symmetries that play a crucial role, namely
conjugations (involutions). Three of them are essential: C—charge conjugation, which
exchanges particles and antiparticles; P—parity, which exchanges left and right; and T—
time reversal, which amounts to rewind the film backward. Whereas C and P are unitary
in any field theory, T is anti-unitary, and all three have a square equal to I . Concerning the
status of these operations, it appeared quickly that C was broken in weak interactions. As
for the product CP, it was thought for a long time that it would be conserved, but the decay
of K mesons finally proved that that was not the case. Thus, only CPT remains, which is
now considered to leave all interactions invariant, which is really a universal symmetry.
Cabibbo suggested to treat all hadronic currents in the same way, by extending the model
from SU(2) to SU(3). This led Gell-Mann to the charge algebra, corresponding to the
symmetry SU(3)⊗ SU(3). Finally, Gell-Mann postulated that the currents themselves
possess the same symmetry, thus obtaining the celebrated current algebra (chiral symmetry),
which enjoys a local symmetry SU(3)⊗ SU(3). Many of the original articles are collected in
the book by Dyson [33]; see also Bohm et al. [18].
With hindsight, clearly the way in which group-theoretical techniques have been
used has been turned upside down. Contrary to the traditional applications, for instance,
in atomic physics, the precise structure of the hadronic currents is unknown; only their
symmetry matters. This is a nice analogy to the celebrated “Cheshire cat” of Lewis Carroll:
the cat has vanished, and only its smile remains.
7. Gauge Theories
7.1. Evolution of the Theory
The most remarkable evolution during the last years is the emergence, then gradually
the omnipresence, of gauge theories. To obtain the idea, we notice that an internal symmetry
may be global, or local. In the global case, this means that the action of a group G on a
quantum field φ( x ) is independent of the point x; for a local symmetry, the action of G
varies from point to point. In the latter case, we obtain the gauge field theory, and G is
called the gauge group. The original idea extends back to Weyl, who in 1918 treated the
electromagnetism as a U(1) gauge theory (hence, abelian). However, the real starting point
was the proposition by Yang and Mills in 1954 of a nonabelian gauge theory based on SU(2).
This proposal also marks the apparition of differential geometry in quantum physics (with
notions such as fiber bundles, connections, etc.). However, the suggestion of Yang and Mills
became popular only when the Dutch physicist G. ’t Hooft proved in 1971 that a nonabelian
gauge theory may be renormalizable, i.e., it may yield finite, verifiable predictions.
An important aspect is that a gauge theory is necessarily exact, which implies that
it contains less arbitrary parameters and it is, therefore, more coherent. In particular, the
interaction Lagrangian is determined uniquely. In addition, interactions are mediated
by massless particles, such as the photon for electromagnetism and gluons for the strong
interaction. A systematic description of gauge theories may be found in [34].
8. Recent Developments
Besides the successful approach of the standard model, many other schemes based on
group theory have been proposed, but in general, they failed. For instance, the so-called
models of grand unification, based on SU(5), SO(10), etc., that aimed at describing all
interactions, except gravity, never survived because they predicted new particles and/or
the decay of the proton, which were never observed.
Symmetry 2021, 13, 1354 9 of 11
A still active proposal is supersymmetry, which seeks to unify bosons and fermions.
Since they are based on different statistics, Bose–Einstein for bosons and Fermi–Dirac for
fermions, such a theory necessarily implies the presence of anticommuting variables. This,
in turn, induces a whole collection of new structures, supergroups, Lie superalgebras,
supermanifolds, etc. Interesting mathematical results follow, but no physical confirmation
has been obtained so far, although supersymmetry is still envisaged in quantum gravity
(see below). The point is that a supersymmetric theory predicts a whole family of new
particles that mirror the known ones, (photinos, gluinos,. . . ), which have not been observed.
A different approach follows from the original idea of Weyl, who imposed the invari-
ance under a redefinition of the length parameter, i.e., scale invariance. In two dimensions,
this leads to invariance under conformal transformations. Indeed, conformal field theories
have become popular (also in statistical mechanics). They are the basis of string theory
(superstrings) in which the elementary constituents of matter are no longer pointlike, but
rather one-dimensional objects (strings) [35]. However, this extension also requires the
use of some exotic Lie groups, such as SO(32), the exceptional groups E(6), E(7), E(8) or,
more generally, loop groups. On the other hand, the 2D conformal group is not a Lie
group since it is infinite dimensional. In this way, infinite dimensional Lie algebras entered
the physics of fundamental interactions. First came the Virasoro algebra, very close to
conformal algebra. Next, by combination with the classical string theory, one can obtain
the whole family of Kac–Moody algebras and their representations [9].
As a matter of fact, Lie algebras or their generalizations play a significant role in symmetry
considerations of various physical systems. A good source of such applications is the volume
of Adler et al. [36], for instance, the Lie algebra-based integrability of dynamical systems, or
the symplectic and Poisson symmetries of Hamiltonian systems. Another interesting topic
is the classification of singularities along Lie algebraic Dynkin diagrams, for instance, ADE
singularities (here, ADE refers to all simply laced diagrams, thus of types An , Bn or En ). These
also appear in models of phase transitions (Landau theory).
Another instance of deformation of classical Lie algebras is that of quantum groups.
However, one may jokingly say that quantum groups are neither groups, nor quantum, as
they are, in fact, Hopf algebras, a well-known structure in algebra.
The ultimate extension of our quest is quantum gravity, which aims at combining
quantum mechanics and general relativity. To that effect, it incorporates notions from
gauge theories, supersymmetry, and superstrings. Many variants have been proposed, but
no convincing candidate has emerged [37].
We conclude this survey with a totally different application of group theory, namely,
the use of braid groups. This requires some explanation since this notion might be unfamiliar.
Given a set An = { a1 , . . . , an } of n points, a braid with n strands is a continuous bijection
σ : An → An . Figure 2 shows some examples with 3 or 4 strands. The composition of two
braids is simply their successive application (Figure 3). With this operation, the set of all
braids with n strands is a group, noted as Bn .
× =
This notion and its representations were introduced by E. Artin in 1925 [38] in a purely
mathematical context (algebraic geometry, and knot theory). More recently, they have
found many applications in mathematical physics, for instance, in statistical mechanics
(Yang–Baxter equation), in particle physics (anyons and Majorana fermions), in fluid
mechanics, and in theoretical computer science (quantum computing). For these applications,
we refer the reader to the review article of Kauffman [39]. Concerning quantum computing,
another type of group appeared recently, namely, Galois groups and, more generally,
profinite groups (i.e., Hausdorff topological groups, compact and totally discontinuous),
which show up in Galois or finite rings theories. In particular, the p-adic group Z p , the
typical example of a Galois group, plays an explicit role in quantum computing. For all this,
we may refer to the works of Vourdas [40,41] and, for Galois theory, the book by Kibler [42].
9. Epilogue
In conclusion, it seems fair to say that group theory has grown into one of the essential
tools of contemporary physics. Besides its fundamental role in relativity, it has provided
physicists with a remarkable analyzing power for exploiting known symmetries, and with
a considerable predictive capability, precisely in cases where the basic physical laws are un-
known. Furthermore, in addition to its crucial importance in the description of fundamental
interactions and elementary particles, group theory has pervaded all fields of physics, often
in an unexpected way. Except for calculus and linear algebra, no mathematical technique
has been so successful.
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