Glide plane

In geometry, and crystallography, a glide plane (or transflection) is a symmetry operation describing how a reflection in a plane, followed by a translation parallel with that plane, may leave the crystal unchanged.

Glide planes are noted by a, b or c, depending on which axis the glide is along. There is also the n glide, which is a glide along the half of a diagonal of a face, and the d glide, which is along a fourth of either a face or space diagonal of the unit cell. The latter is often called the diamond glide plane as it features in the diamond structure.