Pole Figures

Pole figures are two dimensional representations of orientations. To illustrate this we define a random orientation with trigonal crystal symmetry

cs = crystalSymmetry('321')
ori = orientation.rand(cs)

cs = crystalSymmetry
 
  symmetry       : 321               
  elements       : 6                 
  a, b, c        : 1, 1, 1           
  reference frame: X||a*, Y||b, Z||c*
 
 
ori = orientation (321 → xyz)
 
  Bunge Euler angles in degree
     phi1     Phi    phi2
  233.057 173.181 215.251

Starting point is a fixed crystal direction h, e.g.,

% the fixed crystal directions (100)
h = Miller({1,0,0},cs);

Next the specimen directions corresponding to all crystal directions symmetrically equivalent to h are computed

r = ori * h.symmetrise

r = vector3d
 size: 1 x 6

and ploted in a spherical projection

plot(r)

Since the trigonal symmetry group has six symmetry elements the orientation appears at six possitions.

A shortcut for the above computations is the command

% a pole figure plot
plotPDF(ori,Miller({1,0,-1,0},{0,0,0,1},{1,1,-2,1},ori.CS))

We observe, that for some crystal directions only the upper hemisphere is plotted while for other upper and lower hemisphere are plotted. The reason is that if h and -h are symmetrically equivalent the upper and lower hemisphere of the pole figure are symmetric as well.

Contour plots

plotPDF(ori,Miller({1,0,-1,0},{0,0,0,1},{1,1,-2,1},ori.CS),'contourf')
mtexColorbar