Professor
Dept. of Physics, Leinweber Institute of Theoretical Physics, James Franck Institute, and the College
- Address:
- GCIS E109
- Phone:
- 773-702-7186
- Email:
- k-levin@uchicago.edu
- Website:
- https://physics.uchicago.edu/people/profile/kathryn-levin/
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.