https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/08/190826112651.htm

In a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from Rice University and the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien) in Austria examined the behavior of an intermetallic crystal of cerium, palladium and silicon as it was subjected to extreme cold and a strong magnetic field. To their surprise, they found they could transform the quantum behavior of the material in two unique ways, one in which electrons compete to occupy orbitals and another where they compete to occupy spin states.

"The effect is so pronounced with one degree of freedom that it ends up liberating the other one," said Rice's Qimiao Si, co-corresponding author of the study and the director of the Rice Center for Quantum Materials (RCQM). "You can essentially tune the system to maximize damage to one of these, leaving the other well-defined."