Professor Wright is an experimental physicist who uses ultra-cold atomic gases to study quantum phases of matter, and fermionic superfluids in particular. He holds a B.S. in physics from Brigham Young University (2000), and a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Rochester (2009). He received a Research Associate Fellowship from the National Research Council in 2009 for his postoctoral work at the Joint Quantum Institute in Maryland. Professor Wright joined the Dartmouth physics faculty in 2013.
Monolithic bowtie cavity traps for ultracold gases. Yanping Cai, Daniel G. Allman, Parth Sabharwal, and Kevin Wright. Journal of the American Optical society B, 37, 3596-3603 (2020)
Topology, edge states, and zero-energy states of ultracold atoms in one-dimensional optical superlattices with alternating on-site potentials or hopping coefficients. Yan He, Kevin Wright, Said Kouachi, and Chih-Chun Chien Physical Review A, 97, 023618 (2018)
Threshold for creating excitations in a stirred superfluid ring, K. C. Wright, R. B. Blakestad, C. J. Lobb, W. D. Phillips, and G. K. Campbell, Physical Review A, 88, 063633 (2013)
Driving phase slips in a superfluid atom circuit with a rotating weak link, K. C. Wright, R. B. Blakestad, C. J. Lobb, W. D. Phillips, and G. K. Campbell, Physical Review Letters 110, 025302 (2013)
Superflow in a Toroidal Bose-Einstein Condensate: An Atom Circuit with a Tunable Weak Link, A. Ramanathan, K. C. Wright, S. R. Muniz, M. Zelan, W. T. Hill, III, C. J. Lobb, K. Helmerson, W. D. Phillips, and G. K. Campbell, Physical Review Letters 106, 130401 (2011)
Sculpting the Vortex State of a Spinor BEC, K. C. Wright, L. S. Leslie, A. Hansen, and N. P. Bigelow, Physical Review Letters 102, 030405 (2009)
Persistent currents in rings of ultracold fermionic atoms. Yanping Cai, Daniel G. Allman, Parth Sabharwal, and Kevin Wright - Preprint version on arXiv (Currently in review)
In 2021 Prof. Wright recieved an NSF CAREER award, providing $750k over 5 years for experimental studies using lithium quantum gases to simulate the behavior of electrons in solid materials, with special focus on how fluctuations, magnetization, and other factors affect resistance to the flow of currents through thin wires made of "quantum materials" like superconductors. The award also supports an integrated educational program aimed at developing more systematic ways of teaching students to "think like a physicist" in advanced lab courses, and improving their critical thinking and quantitiative reasoning skills.
