Professor Wright is an experimental physicist who uses ultra-cold atomic gases to study quantum phases of matter, and fermionic superfluids in particular. He earned his Ph.D. in Physics at the University of Rochester (2009) under Nick Bigleow, studying the the transfer of orbital angular momentum from light to a Bose-Einstein condensate of rubidium atoms. He then worked as a research fellow at the Joint Quantum Institute in Maryland with Bill Phillips and Gretchen Campbell, helping to create the first superfluid circuits of ultracold bosonic atoms. Since joining the Dartmouth physics faculty in 2013, he has established a research program aimed at studying ultracold fermionic superfluids in circuit-like configurations.
Persistent currents in rings of ultracold fermionic atoms. Yanping Cai, Daniel G. Allman, Parth Sabharwal, and Kevin Wright Physical Review Letters, 128, 150401 (2022).
Mitigating Heating of Degenerate Fermions in a Ring-Dimple Atomic Trap, Daniel G. Allman, Parth Sabharwal, and Kevin C. Wright
Physical Review A, 107, 043322 (2023)
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)
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)
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.
