Universal ground state properties of free fermions in a $d$-dimensional trap

Abstract

The ground state properties of $N$ spinless free fermions in a $d$-dimensional confining potential are studied. We find that any $n$-point correlation function has a simple determinantal structure that allows us to compute several properties exactly for large $N$. We show that the average density has a finite support with an edge, and near this edge the density exhibits a universal (valid for a wide class of potentials) scaling behavior for large $N$. The associated edge scaling function is computed exactly and generalizes to any $d$ the edge electron gas result of Kohn and Mattsson in $d=3$ [Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 3487 (1998)]. In addition, we calculate the kernel (that characterizes any $n$-point correlation function) for large $N$ and show that, when appropriately scaled, it depends only on dimension $d$, but has otherwise universal scaling forms, at the edges. The edge kernel, for higher $d$, generalizes the Airy kernel in one dimension, well known from random matrix theory.