Rate My Professor Thomas Bilitewski

Thomas Bilitewski, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Physics at Oklahoma State University, leading the Theoretical Quantum Science group in the Department of Physics. His research at the intersection of atomic-molecular-optical (AMO) and condensed matter theory addresses quantum many-body physics, quantum simulation, and entanglement generation. Specific interests include squeezing phase transitions and quantum metrology, quantum many-body scars and ergodicity breaking, topological phenomena in dipolar systems, and spatio-temporal control of quantum dynamics. Collaborating with experimental groups on ultracold atomic and molecular platforms, his theoretical efforts explain observations and suggest new physics explorations. Funding supports from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) and National Science Foundation (NSF) enable this work.

Bilitewski earned his PhD from the University of Cambridge (Trinity College) under Nigel Cooper and his Bachelor's and Master's degrees from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany. He conducted postdoctoral research at JILA, University of Colorado Boulder, in Ana Maria Rey's group, and at the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden with Roderich Moessner, joining Oklahoma State University in August 2022. His publications feature in Physical Review Letters, Nature Physics, Science, and others. Key contributions encompass "Thermodynamics of a deeply degenerate SU(N)-symmetric Fermi gas" (Nature Physics, 2020), "Dynamical generation of spin squeezing in ultracold dipolar molecules" (Physical Review Letters, 2021), "Reactions between layer-resolved molecules mediated by dipolar spin exchange" (Science, 2022), "Scattering theory for Floquet-Bloch states" (Physical Review A, 2015), "Disordered flat bands on the kagome lattice" (Physical Review B, 2018), "Quantum Many-Body Scars in Spinor BECs" (Physical Review Letters, 2025), and "Nonequilibrium Critical Scaling of a Squeezing Phase Transition" (Physical Review Letters, 2025). Major grants include AFOSR DEPSCOR (2025–2028, PI, $600,000) on spatio-temporal control in long-range quantum systems and NSF NRT (2025–2030, Co-PI, $3,000,000) for AI and quantum training.