A transition in the hole probability at finite temperature for free fermions in $d$ dimensions

Abstract

In a free Fermi gas at temperature $T$ much higher than the Fermi temperature one expects that the fluctuations of the number of particles in a given region has Poissonian/classical statistics. On the other hand at low temperature the Pauli exclusion principle leads to non trivial counting statistics. It is of great interest from a theoretical and experimental point of view to characterize the crossover between these two limits. Here we focus on the hole probability $P(R,T)$, i.e. the probability that a region of size $R$ is devoid of particles, in dimension $d$, and on the case of a spherical region of large radius $R$. We show that at low temperature it takes the scaling form $P(R,T)\sim \exp\big[-(k_F R)^{d+1}\Phi_d(u=2R\,T/k_F)\big],$ where $k_F$ is the Fermi momentum. By mapping the problem to an effective Coulomb gas, we compute exactly the scaling function $\Phi_d(u)$ in any dimension. Remarkably, it exhibits a transition of order $\tfrac{3}{2}(d+1)$ at the universal critical value $u_c=2/\pi$, signaling a sharp change in the mechanism of rare fluctuations, associated with the emergence of a macroscopic gap in the optimal density of the associated Coulomb gas. Our analytical predictions are supported by precise numerical evaluations of the corresponding Fredholm determinants.