ON NONESSENTIAL DESCRIPTIONS OF CRYSTAL MULTILATTICES

In considering crystal symmetries, crystallographers tend to think in terms of particular configurations. In using nonlinear continuum theor y to analyze such things as phase transitions and twinning, one needs to consider a variety of configurations having different symmetries. C orrelating these leads to some unanswered questions in crystallography . This article deals with one that relates to continuum descriptions o f crystal multilattices. Briefly, one can encounter ambiguities in des cribing symmetries of configurations for a subset of the configuration s of interest. Primarily, the aim here is to characterize such subsets .