title: Statistics of work and orthogonality catastrophe in discrete level systems: an application to fullerene molecules and ultra-cold trapped Fermi gases.
abstract: The sudden introduction of a local impurity in a Fermi sea leads to an anomalous disturbance of its quantum state that represents a local quench, leaving the system out of equilibrium and giving rise to the Anderson orthogonality catastrophe. The statistics of the work done describe the energy fluctuations produced by the quench, providing an accurate and detailed insight into the fundamental physics of the process. We present here a numerical approach to the non-equilibrium work distribution, supported by applications to phenomena occurring at very diverse energy ranges. One of them is the valence electron shake-up induced by photo-ionization of a core state in a fullerene molecule. The other is the response of an ultra-cold gas of trapped fermions to an embedded two-level atom excited by a fast pulse. Working at low thermal energies, we detect the primary role played by many-particle states of the perturbed system with one or two excited fermions. We validate our approach through the comparison with some photoemission data on fullerene films and previous analytical calculations on harmonically trapped Fermi gases.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Fisica, Università della Calabria, Cubo 30C, 87036 Rende (CS), Italy ; INFN, sezione LNF, Gruppo collegato di Cosenza, Cubo 31C, 87036 Rende (CS), Italy.
authors.forename: Antonello
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sindona
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Fisica, Università della Calabria, Cubo 30C, 87036 Rende (CS), Italy ; INFN, sezione LNF, Gruppo collegato di Cosenza, Cubo 31C, 87036 Rende (CS), Italy.
authors.forename: Michele
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Pisarra
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Fisica, Università della Calabria, Cubo 30C, 87036 Rende (CS), Italy ; INFN, sezione LNF, Gruppo collegato di Cosenza, Cubo 31C, 87036 Rende (CS), Italy.
authors.forename: Mario
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Gravina
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Fisica, Università della Calabria, Cubo 30C, 87036 Rende (CS), Italy ; INFN, sezione LNF, Gruppo collegato di Cosenza, Cubo 31C, 87036 Rende (CS), Italy.
authors.forename: Cristian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Vacacela Gomez
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Fisica, Università della Calabria, Cubo 30C, 87036 Rende (CS), Italy ; INFN, sezione LNF, Gruppo collegato di Cosenza, Cubo 31C, 87036 Rende (CS), Italy.
authors.forename: Pierfrancesco
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Riccardi
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Fisica, Università della Calabria, Cubo 30C, 87036 Rende (CS), Italy ; INFN, sezione LNF, Gruppo collegato di Cosenza, Cubo 31C, 87036 Rende (CS), Italy.
authors.forename: Giovanni
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Falcone
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Fisica, Università della Calabria, Cubo 30C, 87036 Rende (CS), Italy ; INFN, sezione LNF, Gruppo collegato di Cosenza, Cubo 31C, 87036 Rende (CS), Italy.
authors.forename: Francesco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Plastina
keywords: nanostructured systems; non-equilibrium thermodynamics; orthogonality catastrophe; sudden quench; ultra-cold Fermi gases; work distribution