English

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 aa and in all dimensions dd. The momentum distribution and the spatial profile of the cloud exhibit a universal edge exponent d/ad/a, 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