3.

3 The Octahedral Group 87

Figure 3.2: Rotational symmetries of the octahedron and the cube. To keep the
figure simple, only one C3 axis and one C; axis is shown.

Consider first rotations about the z-axis. It is clear that a n/2-

rotation C4 is a symmetry element; so are the repeated transformations
Ci, Ci, and Ci = E , the unit element. The z-axis is a fourfold axis;
and so are the 2-,and y-axes. These axes are equivalent because, for
instance, a x / 2 rotation about the z-axis takes the x-axis into the y-axis.
Hence ~/2-rotationsabout the three axes belong to the same conjugacy
class. Furthermore, a n-rotation about the x-axis takes the z-axis into
the (-2)-axis, and a n/2-rotation about the -z-axis is the same as a
3n/2-rotation about the x-axis, thus the 3n/2-rotations are in the same
conjugacy class as the n/2-rotations. There are altogether six elements
in the conjugacy class 6C4. The n-rotations form the three-element class
3c2.
There is a different kind of n-rotation: it is about axes which are
passing through the centre of the cube, parallel to the face diagonals
(one of these axes, denoted by C,; is shown in Fig. 3.2). Since there
is no element of 0 which would take a coordinate axis into C,; the six
n-rotations discussed here form a conjugacy class of their own, which
we denote by SC;.