Publication : t18/117

Abstract:
We consider N non-interacting fermions prepared in the ground state of a 1D confining potential and submitted to an instantaneous quench consisting in releasing the trapping potential. We show that the quantum return probability of finding the fermions in their initial state at a later time falls off as a power law in the long-time regime, with a universal exponent depending only on N and on whether the free fermions expand over the full line or over a half-line. In both geometries the amplitudes of this power-law decay are expressed in terms of finite determinants of moments of the one-body bound-state wavefunctions in the potential. These amplitudes are worked out explicitly for the harmonic and square-well potentials. At large fermion numbers they obey scaling laws involving the Fermi energy of the initial state. The use of the Selberg-Mehta integrals stemming from random matrix theory has been instrumental in the derivation of these results.

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