MIT physicists have uncovered a surprising split in the behavior of electrons inside a quantum material: two nearly identical electronic patterns rebuild themselves in fundamentally different ways.

Electrons inside a solid do not always behave like independent particles. Under the right conditions, enormous numbers of them can reorganize together, producing entirely new states of matter with properties that the original material did not appear to possess.

MIT physicists have now watched that collective reorganization unfold in unusual detail. Their experiments reveal that two electronic phases occupying the same quantum material can form through fundamentally different mechanisms, even though both involve the same underlying type of electron order.