Luttinger-liquid universality in the time evolution after an interaction quench.

We provide evidence that the relaxation dynamics of one-dimensional, metallic Fermi systems resulting out of an abrupt amplitude change of the two-particle interaction has aspects which are universal in the Luttinger liquid sense: the leading long-time behavior of certain observables is described by universal functions of the equilibrium Luttinger liquid parameter and the renormalized velocity. We analytically derive those functions for the Tomonaga-Luttinger model and verify our hypothesis of universality by considering spinless lattice fermions within the framework of the density-matrix renormalization group.