Assistant Professor
Professor Gadway is an experimentalist in atomic, molecular, and optical (AMO) physics. He received his B.A. in astronomy-physics from Colgate University in 2007, graduating summa cum laude. He went on to receive his PhD in physics from Stony Brook University in 2012, working in the group of Dominik Schneble. His thesis research focused on the properties of disordered and low-dimensional atomic quantum gases. From 2012-2014, Professor Gadway was a National Research Council postdoctoral research fellow, working in the group of Deborah Jin and Jun Ye at JILA, in Boulder, Colorado. His postdoctoral research was on strongly correlated systems of ultracold polar molecules. He joined the faculty at the University of Illinois in the fall of 2014.
| Semester | Course | Outstanding |
|---|---|---|
| Spring 2018 | PHYS 214 |
Now scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign using an innovative quantum simulation technique have made one of the first observations of a mobility edge in a low-dimensional system. Physics professor Bryce Gadway and graduate student Fangzhao Alex An were able to combine a disordered virtual material—in this case a pair of coupled 1D chains—with artificial magnetic fields to explore this phenomenon.
Assistant Professor Bryce Gadway of the Department of Physics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has been selected for the 2017 U.S. Air Force Young Investigator Research Program. Gadway is among 43 early-career scientists and engineers nationwide to receive this three-year award of $450,000. U.S. Air Force Young Investigators are selected based on demonstrated exceptional ability and promise for conducting basic research in scientific and engineering areas identified as strategic to the US Air Force mission.
Topological insulators, an exciting, relatively new class of materials, are capable of carrying electricity along the edge of the surface, while the bulk of the material acts as an electrical insulator. Practical applications for these materials are still mostly a matter of theory, as scientists probe their microscopic properties to better understand the fundamental physics that govern their peculiar behavior.
Using atomic quantum-simulation, an experimental technique involving finely tuned lasers and ultracold atoms about a billion times colder than room temperature, to replicate the properties of a topological insulator, a team of researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has directly observed for the first time the protected boundary state (the topological soliton state) of the topological insulator trans-polyacetylene. The transport properties of this organic polymer are typical of topological insulators and of the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) model.
Physics graduate students Eric Meier and Fangzhao Alex An, working with Professor Bryce Gadway, developed a new experimental method, an engineered approach that allows the team to probe quantum transport phenomena.