Quaternionic Representations of the Pyritohedral Group, Related Polyhedra and Lattices

TL;DR

This paper explores quaternionic representations of the pyritohedral group and related lattices, constructing cubic lattices and polyhedra such as pseudoicosahedron and pyritohedron using Coxeter groups and quaternion algebra.

Contribution

It introduces quaternionic models for cubic lattices and symmetries, simplifying the understanding of pyritohedral symmetry and related polyhedra.

Findings

Quaternionic representation of pyritohedral symmetry

Explicit construction of pseudoicosahedron and pyritohedron

Connection between Coxeter groups and cubic lattices

Abstract

We construct the fcc (face centered cubic), bcc (body centered cubic) and sc (simple cubic) lattices as the root and the weight lattices of the affine Coxeter groups W(D3) and W(B3)=Aut(D3). The rank-3 Coxeter-Weyl groups describing the point tetrahedral symmetry and the octahedral symmetry of the cubic lattices have been constructed in terms of quaternions. Reflection planes of the Coxeter-Dynkin diagrams are identified with certain planes of the unit cube. It turns out that the pyritohedral symmetry takes a simpler form in terms of quaternionic representation. The D3 diagram is used to construct the vertices of polyhedra relevant to the cubic lattices and, in particular, constructions of the pseudoicosahedron and its dual pyritohedron are explicitly worked out.