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For example, a crystal, viewed as a lattice with a single kind of atom located at every lattice point (the simplest basis form), may also be viewed as a lattice with a basis of two atoms. In this case, a primitive unit cell is a unit cell having only one lattice point in the first way of describing the crystal in order to ensure the smallest ...
A primitive cell is a unit cell that contains exactly one lattice point. For unit cells generally, lattice points that are shared by n cells are counted as 1 / n of the lattice points contained in each of those cells; so for example a primitive unit cell in three dimensions which has lattice points only at its eight vertices is considered to contain 1 / 8 of each of them. [3]
In mathematical physics, a lattice model is a mathematical model of a physical system that is defined on a lattice, as opposed to a continuum, such as the continuum of space or spacetime. Lattice models originally occurred in the context of condensed matter physics, where the atoms of a crystal automatically form a lattice.
By definition, the syntax (hkℓ) denotes a plane that intercepts the three points a 1 /h, a 2 /k, and a 3 /ℓ, or some multiple thereof. That is, the Miller indices are proportional to the inverses of the intercepts of the plane with the unit cell (in the basis of the lattice vectors).
In geometry and group theory, a lattice in the real coordinate space is an infinite set of points in this space with the properties that coordinate-wise addition or subtraction of two points in the lattice produces another lattice point, that the lattice points are all separated by some minimum distance, and that every point in the space is within some maximum distance of a lattice point.
The crystal structure can be described as a Bravais lattice with a group of atoms, called the basis, placed at every lattice point; that is, [crystal structure] = [lattice] [basis]. If the lattice is infinite and completely regular, the system is a perfect crystal.
In either case, one needs to choose the three lattice vectors a 1, a 2, and a 3 that define the unit cell (note that the conventional unit cell may be larger than the primitive cell of the Bravais lattice, as the examples below illustrate). Given these, the three primitive reciprocal lattice vectors are also determined (denoted b 1, b 2, and b 3).
A lattice in which the conventional basis is primitive is called a primitive lattice, while a lattice with a non-primitive conventional basis is called a centered lattice. The choice of an origin and a basis implies the choice of a unit cell which can further be used to describe a crystal pattern.