Statistics of the maximal distance and momentum in a trapped Fermi gas at low temperature

Abstract

We consider N non-interacting fermions in an isotropic d-dimensional harmonic trap. We compute analytically the cumulative distribution of the maximal radial distance of the fermions from the trap center at zero temperature. While in d = 1 the limiting distribution (in the large N limit), properly centered and scaled, converges to the squared Tracy–Widom distribution of the Gaussian unitary ensemble in random matrix theory, we show that for all d > 1, the limiting distribution converges to the Gumbel law. These limiting forms turn out to be universal, i.e. independent of the details of the trapping potential for a large class of isotropic trapping potentials. We also study the position of the right-most fermion in a given direction in d dimensions and, in the case of a harmonic trap, the maximum momentum, and show that they obey similar Gumbel statistics. Finally, we generalize these results to low but finite temperature.