Local chiral-symmetry breaking in globally centrosymmetric crystals

A thorough tensor analysis of the Bragg-forbidden reflection $(00.3{)}_{h}$ in corundum systems having a global center of inversion, such as ${\mathrm{V}}_{2}{\mathrm{O}}_{3}$ and $\ensuremath{\alpha}\mathrm{\text{\ensuremath{-}}}{\mathrm{F}\mathrm{e}}_{2}{\mathrm{O}}_{3}$, shows that anomalous x-ray resonant diffraction can access chiral properties related to the dipole-quadrupole ($E1\mathrm{\text{\ensuremath{-}}}E2$) channel via an interference with the pure quadrupole-quadrupole ($E2\mathrm{\text{\ensuremath{-}}}E2$) 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.