The crucial role of symmetry considerations is well appreciated in contemporary physics, and it is extremely important in highly anisotropic crystalline materials ungergoing phase transitions, which we are generally interested in. We therefore study various symmetry aspects of structural and magnetic phase transitions, Landau theory, order parameters, role of the time-reversal symmetry, symmetry breaking and spontaneous macroscopic properties, as well as symmetry of domain walls and other topological defects. From this list it is clear that our efforts typically, but not exclusively, apply to ferroic materials, which is the main theme of the Department of Dielectrics.
We serve the community via detailed investigating and publishing systematic general results and overviews. These include lists of all possible reductions of macroscopic crystallographic symmetry of crystals, related to the associated changes in the macroscopic property (available on – http://palata.fzu.cz/species/13x13axial), symmetry classification from the point of view of the octuplet of vector-like quantities, as well as participation in compilation of the International tables for crystallography.
