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 - 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.