Character table

EN Texto en inglés Aún no hay artículo en tu idioma: extracto en inglés.

In group theory, a branch of abstract algebra, a character table is a two-dimensional table whose rows correspond to irreducible representations, and whose columns correspond to conjugacy classes of group elements. The entries consist of characters, the traces of the matrices representing group elements of the column's class in the given row's group representation. In chemistry, crystallography, and spectroscopy, character tables of point groups are used to classify e.g. molecular vibrations according to their symmetry, and to predict whether a transition between two states is forbidden for symmetry reasons. Many university level textbooks on physical chemistry, quantum chemistry, spectroscopy and inorganic chemistry devote a chapter to the use of symmetry group character tables.