Expansion of a free Fermi gas released from an isotropic trapping potential
Statistical Mechanics
2026-07-20 v1 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
Abstract
We consider a system of non-interacting fermions prepared in the many-body ground state of an isotropic trapping potential in any dimension, and investigate the ballistic expansion of the fermionic cloud after the potential is suddenly released. Using semi-classical techniques, we derive the full late-time profile of the expanding cloud in the regime when the fermion number is large. We thus obtain explicit expressions for power-law potentials with arbitrary exponent and in all dimensions . The momentum distribution and the spatial profile of the cloud exhibit a universal edge exponent , thus generalizing the Wigner semi-circle law and the Thomas-Fermi distribution.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2607.18007,
title = {Expansion of a free Fermi gas released from an isotropic trapping potential},
author = {J M Luck and P L Krapivsky},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.18007},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
28 pages, 7 figures, 55 references