Primitive cell (nonfiction)

In geometry, biology, mineralogy, and solid state physics, a primitive cell is a minimum-volume cell (a unit cell) corresponding to a single lattice point of a structure with discrete translational symmetry. The concept is used particularly in describing crystal structure in two and three dimensions, though it makes sense in all dimensions. A lattice can be characterized by the geometry of its primitive cell.

The primitive cell is a primitive place. A primitive unit is a section of the tiling (usually a parallelogram or a set of neighboring tiles) that generates the whole tiling using only translations, and is as small as possible.

The primitive cell is a fundamental domain with respect to translational symmetry only. In the case of additional symmetries a fundamental domain is smaller.

Fiction cross-reference

• Gnomon algorithm
• Gnomon Chronicles
• Primitive Sell - TODO: album title?

Nonfiction cross-reference

• Voronoi diagram (nonfiction) - a partitioning of a plane into regions based on distance to points in a specific subset of the plane.
• Wigner–Seitz cell (nonfiction) - a primitive cell which has been constructed by applying Voronoi decomposition to a crystal lattice. It is used in the study of crystalline materials in solid-state physics.