Crystal Rotations Represented as Rodrigues Vectors

Rodrigues vectors are explored as a means of representing crystal orientation distributions. Relationships between the Rodrigues vectors and several more commonly utilized representations of rotations are presented. The restrictions which cubic material symmetry imposes on the Rodrigues space are examined and relationships for special equivalent configurations are developed. Common crystal orientation distributions are presented as Rodrigues vectors and compared to the more standard representations in terms of pole figures and Euler angles. Applications of the Rodrigues space for illustrating misorientations between neighboring grains are also discussed.