Group Theory Dinesh Khattar

The book is intended to serve as an introductory course in group theory geared towards second-year university students. It aims to provide them with the background needed to pursue more advanced courses in algebra and to provide a rich source of examples and exercises. Studying group theory began in the late eighteenth century and is still gaining importance due to its applications in physics, chemistry, geometry, and many fields in mathematics.

The book is intended to serve as an introductory course in group theory geared towards second-year university students. It aims to provide them with the background needed to pursue more advanced courses in algebra and to provide a rich source of examples and exercises. Studying group theory began in the late eighteenth century and is still gaining importance due to its applications in physics, chemistry, geometry, and many fields in mathematics.

We are pleased to present the book “Geometric Group Theory, Dortmund and Carleton Conferences”, a selection of the best research articles from two strongly related 2007 international conferences:

This book is based on a one-semester course for advanced undergraduates specializing in physical chemistry. I am aware that the mathematical training of most science majors is more heavily weighted towards analysis – typ- ally calculus and differential equations – than towards algebra. But it remains my conviction that the basic ideas and applications of group theory are not only vital, but not dif?cult to learn, even though a formal mathematical setting with emphasis on rigor and completeness is not the place where most chemists would feel most comfortable in learning them.

One of the difficulties in an introductory book is to communicate a sense of purpose. Only too easily to the beginner does the book become a sequence of definitions, concepts, and results which seem little more than curiousities leading nowhere in particular. In this book I have tried to overcome this problem by making my central aim the determination of all possible groups of orders 1 to 15, together with some study of their structure. By the time this aim is realised towards the end of the book, the reader should have acquired the basic ideas and methods of group theory.

This volume is a consequence of a series of seminars presented by the authors at the Infrared Spectroscopy Institute, Canisius College, Buffalo, New York, over the last nine years. Many participants on an intermediate level lacked a sufficient background in mathematics and quantum mechan­ ics, and it became evident that a non mathematical or nearly nonmathe­ matical approach would be necessary. The lectures were designed to fill this need and proved very successful. As a result of the interest that was developed in this approach, it was decided to write this book. The text is intended for scientists and students with only limited theore­ tical background in spectroscopy, but who are sincerely interested in the interpretation of molecular spectra. The book develops the detailed selection rules for fundamentals, combinations, and overtones for molecules in several point groups. Detailed procedures used in carrying out the normal coordinate treatment for several molecules are also presented. Numerous examples from the literature illustrate the use of group theory in the in­ terpretation of molecular spectra and in the determination of molecular structure.