  We investigate the behaviour of a single qubit coupled to a low-dimensional,
ultra-cold Fermi gas. The scattering between the system and the fermions leads
to the loss of any coherence in the initial state of the qubit and we show that
the exact dynamics of this process is strongly influenced by the effect of the
orthogonality catastrophe within the gas. We highlight the relationship between
the Loschmidt echo and the retarded Green's function - typically used to
formulate the dynamical theory of the catastrophe - and demonstrate that the
effect can be triggered and characterized via local operations on the qubit. We
demonstrate how the expected broadening of the spectral function can be
observed using Ramsey interferometry on the qubit.
