Full counting statistics of time-of-flight images
Abstract
Inspired by recent advances in cold atomic systems and nonequilibrium physics, we introduce a characterization scheme, the time-of-flight full counting statistics. We benchmark this method on an interacting one-dimensional Bose gas and show that there the time-of-flight image displays several universal regimes. Finite momentum fluctuations are observed at larger distances, where a crossover from exponential to Gamma distribution occurs upon decreasing momentum resolution. Zero-momentum particles, on the other hand, obey a Gumbel distribution in the weakly interacting limit, characterizing the quantum fluctuations of the former quasicondensate. Time-of-flight full counting statistics is demonstrated to capture (pre-)thermalization processes after a quantum quench and can be useful for characterizing exotic quantum states such as many-body localized systems or models of holography.