Wigner's 6-j symbols were introduced by Eugene Paul Wigner in 1940 and published in 1965. They are defined as a sum over products of four Wigner 3-j symbols,

${\displaystyle {\begin{Bmatrix}j_{1}&j_{2}&j_{3}\\j_{4}&j_{5}&j_{6}\end{Bmatrix}}=\sum _{m_{1},\dots ,m_{6}}(-1)^{\sum _{k=1}^{6}(j_{k}-m_{k})}{\begin{pmatrix}j_{1}&j_{2}&j_{3}\\-m_{1}&-m_{2}&-m_{3}\end{pmatrix}}{\begin{pmatrix}j_{1}&j_{5}&j_{6}\\m_{1}&-m_{5}&m_{6}\end{pmatrix}}{\begin{pmatrix}j_{4}&j_{2}&j_{6}\\m_{4}&m_{2}&-m_{6}\end{pmatrix}}{\begin{pmatrix}j_{4}&j_{5}&j_{3}\\-m_{4}&m_{5}&m_{3}\end{pmatrix}}.}$

The summation is over all six m_i allowed by the selection rules of the 3-j symbols.

They are closely related to the Racah W-coefficients, which are used for recoupling 3 angular momenta, although Wigner 6-j symbols have higher symmetry and therefore provide a more efficient means of storing the recoupling coefficients. Their relationship is given by:

${\displaystyle {\begin{Bmatrix}j_{1}&j_{2}&j_{3}\\j_{4}&j_{5}&j_{6}\end{Bmatrix}}=(-1)^{j_{1}+j_{2}+j_{4}+j_{5}}W(j_{1}j_{2}j_{5}j_{4};j_{3}j_{6}).}$