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Polonium is the only element to crystallise into a simple cubic structure atambient conditions. Moreover, at high temperatures it undergoes a structuralphase transition into a less symmetric trigonal configuration. It has long beensuspected that the strong spin-orbit coupling in Polonium is involved in bothpeculiarities, but the precise mechanism by which it operates remainscontroversial. Here, we introduce a single microscopic model capable ofcapturing the atomic structure of all chalcogen crystals: Selenium, Tellurium,and Polonium. We show that the strong spin-orbit coupling in Poloniumsuppresses the trigonal charge and orbital ordered state known to be the groundstate configuration of Selenium and Tellurium, and allows the simple cubicstate to prevail instead. We also confirm a recent suggestion based on abinitio calculations that a small increase in the lattice constant mayeffectively decrease the role of spin-orbit coupling, leading to a re-emergenceof the trigonal orbital ordered state at high temperatures. We conclude thatPolonium is a unique element, in which spins, orbitals, electronic charges, andlattice deformations all cooperate and collectively cause the emergence of theonly elemental crystal structure with the simplest possible, cubic, lattice.

The simple-cubic structure of elemental Polonium and its relation to combined charge and orbital order in other elemental chalcogens