Figure 1: The chiral tetragonal phase of elemental tellurium as a result of multiple charge order. (a) The distortion pattern of a one-dimensional chain with a two-third filled band, described by the displacements $u=\text{cos}(qx)$, with $q=2\pi /3a$. (b) The same one-dimensional pattern repeated throughout a three-dimensional simple cubic lattice. The displacements are given by $\mathbf{\text{u}}=\text{cos}(\mathbf{\text{Q}}\cdot \mathbf{\text{r}})\widehat{\mathbf{\text{x}}}$, with $\mathbf{\text{Q}}=(q,q,q)$ and $\widehat{\mathbf{\text{x}}}=(1,0,0)$. (c) The chiral combination of three differently polarized one-dimensional patterns with a relative phase difference of $\varphi =2\pi /3$. The distortion pattern $\mathbf{\text{u}}=(\text{cos}(\mathbf{\text{Q}}\cdot \mathbf{\text{r}}),\text{cos}(\mathbf{\text{Q}}\cdot \mathbf{\text{r}}+\varphi ),\text{cos}(\mathbf{\text{Q}}\cdot \mathbf{\text{r}}+2\varphi ))$ coincides with the tetragonal lattice structure of $\text{Te}$. The chirality of the pattern is indicated by the corkscrewlike arrow following the double bonds in the final structure.