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Local Chiral-Symmetry Breaking in Globally Centrosymmetric Crystals

2003; American Physical Society; Volume: 91; Issue: 25 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1103/physrevlett.91.257402

1092-0145

S. Di Matteo, Yves Joly, A. Bombardi, L. Paolasini, F. de Bergevin, C. R. Natoli,

Crystallography and Radiation Phenomena

A thorough tensor analysis of the Bragg-forbidden reflection (00.3)(h) in corundum systems having a global center of inversion, such as V2O3 and alpha-Fe2O3, shows that anomalous x-ray resonant diffraction can access chiral properties related to the dipole-quadrupole (E1-E2) channel via an interference with the pure quadrupole-quadrupole (E2-E2) process. This is also confirmed by independent ab initio numerical simulations. In such a way, it becomes possible to detect chiral quantities in systems where dichroic absorption techniques are ineffective.