Crystal flex bases and the RUM spectrum

A theory of free spanning sets, free bases and their space group symmetric variants is developed for the first order flex spaces of infinite bar-joint frameworks. Such spanning sets and bases are computed for a range of fundamental crystallographic bar-joint frameworks, including the honeycomb (graphene) framework, the octahedron (perovskite) framework and the 2D and 3D kagome frameworks. It is also shown that the existence of crystal flex bases is closely related to linear structure in the rigid unit mode (RUM) spectrum and a more general geometric flex spectrum.