Fermi gas response to time-dependent perturbations

Abstract

We describe the Riemann-Hilbert (RH) approach to computing the long-time response of a Fermi gas to a time-dependent perturbation. The approach maps the problem onto a noncommuting RH problem. The method is nonperturbative, quite general, and can be used to compute the Fermi gas response in driven (out of equilibrium) as well as equilibrium systems. It has the appealing feature of working directly with scattering amplitudes defined at the Fermi surface rather than with the bare Hamiltonian. We illustrate the power of the method by rederiving standard results for the core-hole and open-line Green's functions for the equilibrium Fermi edge singularity (FES) problem. We then show that the case of the nonseparable potential can be solved nonperturbatively with no more effort than for the separable case. We compute the corresponding results for a biased (nonequilibrium) model tunneling device, similar to those used in single-photon detectors, in which a photon absorption process can significantly change the conductance of the barrier. For times much larger than the inverse bias across the device, the response of the Fermi gases in the two electrodes shows that the equilibrium Fermi edge singularity is smoothed, shifted in frequency, and becomes polarity dependent. These results have a simple interpretation in terms of known results for the equilibrium case but with (in general complex-valued) combinations of elements of the scattering matrix replacing the equilibrium phase shifts. We also consider the shot noise spectrum of a tunnel junction subject to a time-dependent bias and demonstrate that the calculation is essentially the same as that for the FES problem. For the case of a periodically driven device we show that the noise spectrum for coherent states of alternating current can be easily obtained using this approach.