One-dimensional free fermions are studied with emphasis on propagating fronts emerging from a step initial condition. The probability distribution of the number of particles at the edge of the front is determined exactly. It is found that the full counting statistics coincide with the eigenvalue statistics of the edge spectrum of matrices from the Gaussian unitary ensemble. The correspondence established between the random matrix eigenvalues and the particle positions yields the order statistics of the rightmost particles in the front and, furthermore, it implies their subdiffusive spreading.
One-dimensional free fermions are studied with emphasis on propagating fronts emerging from a step initial condition. The probability distribution of the number of particles at the edge of the front is determined exactly. It is found that the full counting statistics coincide with the eigenvalue statistics of the edge spectrum of matrices from the Gaussian unitary ensemble. The correspondence established between the random matrix eigenvalues and the particle positions yields the order statistics of the rightmost particles in the front and, furthermore, it implies their subdiffusive spreading.
We study the distribution of particle number in extended subsystems of a one-dimensional noninteracting Fermi gas confined in a potential well at zero temperature. Universal features are identified in the scaled bulk and edge regions of the trapped gas where the full counting statistics are given by the corresponding limits of the eigenvalue statistics in Gaussian unitary random matrix ensembles. The universal limiting behavior is confirmed by the bulk and edge scaling of the particle number fluctuations and the entanglement entropy.
We theoretically study propagating correlation fronts in noninteracting fermions on a one-dimensional lattice starting from an alternating state, where the fermions occupy every other site. We find that, in the long-time asymptotic regime, all the moments of dynamical fluctuations around the correlation fronts are described by the universal correlation functions of Gaussian orthogonal and symplectic random matrices at the soft edge. Our finding here sheds light on a hitherto unknown connection between random matrix theory and correlation propagation in quantum dynamics.
We revisit the problem of full counting statistics of particles on a segment of a one-dimensional gas of free fermions. Using a combination of analytical and numerical methods, we study the crossover between the counting of discrete particles and of the continuous particle density as a function of smoothing in the counting procedure. In the discrete-particle limit, the result is given by the Fisher-Hartwig expansion for Toeplitz determinants, while in the continuous limit we recover the bosonization results. This example of full counting statistics with smoothing is also related to orthogonality catastrophe, Fermi-edge singularity and non-equilibrium bosonization.
We revisit the problem of finding the probability distribution of a fermionic number of one-dimensional spinless free fermions on a segment of a given length.The generating function for this probability distribution can be expressed as a determinant of a Toeplitz matrix.We use the recently proven generalized Fisher-Hartwig conjecture on the asymptotic behavior of such determinants to find the generating function for the full counting statistics of fermions on a line segment.Unlike the method of bosonization, the Fisher-Hartwig formula correctly takes into account the discreteness of charge.Furthermore, we numerically check the precision of the generalized Fisher-Hartwig formula, find that it has a higher precision than rigorously proven so far and conjecture the form of the next-order correction to the existing formula.
In the first part of the article, we study one-dimensional noninteracting fermions in the continuum and in the presence of the repulsive inverse power law potential, with an emphasis on the Wigner function in the semiclassical limit. In this limit, the Wigner function exhibits an edge called the Fermi surf that depends only on the classical one-particle Hamiltonian. Around the Fermi surf, under a well-defined semiclassical limit, the Wigner function can be expressed in terms of Airy functions which yield a smooth matching between the two regions delimited by the Fermi surf. In the second part of the article, the system is prepared in the ground state of the inverse power law potential where only the left half line is filled with fermions. Then the potential is switched off, resulting in the emergence of a propagating quantum front. We show that the power law decay of the pre-quench potential that separates the left and right half systems leads to the emergence of the Airy kernel (well known in Random Matrix Theory) at the quantum front in the long-time limit. This also comes with anomalous diffusive spreading around the front.
We analyze thermalization and eigenstate thermalization in the random free fermion model, a quadratic Hamiltonian with a Gaussian Orthogonal Ensemble hopping matrix, by an exact random-matrix calculation. For a single-particle observable A we compute the ensemble average and fluctuations of Tr(Aρ(t)): we derive the relaxation envelope g2(t/τλ) with τλ=ℏ/(2ηN) and its oscillatory ∣t∣−3 tail, both properties of the semicircular limiting density, and we show that the variance of the fluctuations is O(1/N), so that the relaxation profile self-averages at fixed scaled time. Incorporating particle-number conservation, we prove a factorization theorem for the energy-shell statistics of the many-body eigenstates: the energy-independent ETH structure follows from the statistical independence of the eigenvector matrix and the spectrum, and at fixed realization the energy constraint enters only through a covariance subtraction of relative order 1/N. A controlled eigenvector--eigenvalue correlation deformation H(ε)=H0+εH1 then generates, at first order in ε, the energy dependence of the diagonal energy-resolved slope and of the off-diagonal spectral function, a single-particle diagnostic of the ETH structure in the allowed particle-hole sector. Correlation-function fluctuations and the single-particle spectral form factor finally identify the subleading O(1/N) late-time fingerprints of two-level spectral correlations. The model thus separates eigenbasis chaos from spectral chaos and identifies the statistical origin of energy-independent versus energy-dependent ETH.