  We study a quantum quench in a one-dimensional spinless fermion model
(equivalent to the XXZ spin chain), where a magnetic flux is suddenly switched
off. This quench is equivalent to imposing a pulse of electric field and
therefore generates an initial particle current. This current is not a
conserved quantity in presence of a lattice and interactions and we investigate
numerically its time-evolution after the quench, using the infinite
time-evolving block decimation method. For repulsive interactions or large
initial flux, we find oscillations that are governed by excitations deep inside
the Fermi sea. At long times we observe that the current remains non-vanishing
in the gapless cases, whereas it decays to zero in the gapped cases. Although
the linear response theory (valid for a weak flux) predicts the same long-time
limit of the current for repulsive and attractive interactions (relation with
the zero-temperature Drude weight), larger nonlinearities are observed in the
case of repulsive interactions compared with that of the attractive case.
