Kathryn Levin

Professor
Dept. Physics, James Franck Institute, and the College

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Background

I did my PhD at Harvard University and then went on to do two post docs, first at the University of Rochester where I learned superconductivity from Ron Parks and then at the University of California, Irvine. I have over the years at the University of Chicago trained about 25 PhD students and about the same number of post doctoral scholars. I have served on many prize committees and advisory boards. My major administrative role was as a co-PI in a Science and Technology Center on High Temperature Superconductors (STcS) principally organized by Miles Klein at Urbana. My particular focus on the high temperature cuprates has been along the direction of the so-called BCS-BEC crossover. This is an approach which has been very fruitful--as the cold atomic Fermi gas superfluids have provided an exciting laboratory for this scenario.

Research

I am a condensed matter theorist who has worked largely in the fields of superconductivity and superfluidity, with close interactions to experiment. Early work in this subject began with studies of superfluid helium-3, then moved to heavy fermion superconductors and then to the high Tc cuprates. While I maintain activities in the field of High Tc cuprates, at the time of the discovery of atomic gas (fermionic) superfluids, I developed a research program in Atomic and Molecular (AMO) Physics so that my research is rather evenly divided between AMO and condensed matter. My work in the field of atomic superfluids (both bosonic and fermionic) has recently focused on their non-equilibrium behavior. New exotic superconductors such as proximitized topological superconductors and bi-layer graphene are also of great interest.

Selected Publications

• Full Publication List
• "Universal approach to light driven "superconductivity" via preformed pairs" Ke Wang, Zhiqiang Wang, Qijin Chen and K. Levin ArXiv 2412.05420 (2024)
• "Higgs amplitude mode in the optical conductivity in the preence of a supercurrent: Gauge invariant forumulation" Ke Wang, Rufus Boyack and K. Levin ArXiv 2411.18781
• "Superconductivity from failed magnetism: Studies of electronic pairing mechanisms, Zhiqiang Wang and K. Levin (preprint 2024).
• Universal coherent atom-molecule oscillations in the dynamics of the unitary Bose gas: effects of a narrow Feshbach resonance Ke Wang, Shu Nagata, Zhendong Zhang, Zhiqiang Wang, and K. Levin ArXiv 2408.08415
• "Instabilities of molecular condensates and molecule-molecule scattering length in Feshbach resonance of bosonic atoms" Zhiqiang Wang, Ke Wang, Qijin Chen, Cheng Chin and K. Levin, (preprint 2024)
• "Test for BCS-BEC Crossover in the Cuprate Superconductors" Qijin Chen, Zhiqiang Wang, Rufus Boyack and K. Levin, Nature (npj Quantum Materials 9, 27 (2024))
• "Stability and Dynamics of Atom-Molecule Superfluids Near a Narrow Feshbach Resonance", Zhiqiang Wang, Ke Wang, Zhendong Zhang, Shu Nagata, and Cheng Chin, Phys Rev A 110, 013306 (2024).
• "Simulating cosmology by a quantum quench of an atomic BEC" Ke Wang, Han Fu, and K. Levin, Phys Rev A 109, 013316 (2024)