  We prove a special case of a conjecture in asymptotic analysis by Harold
Widom. More precisely, we establish the leading and next-to-leading term of a
semi-classical expansion of the trace of the square of certain integral
operators on the Hilbert space $L^2(\R^d)$. As already observed by Gioev and
Klich, this implies that the bi-partite entanglement entropy of the free Fermi
gas in its ground state grows at least as fast as the surface area of the
spatially bounded part times a logarithmic enhancement.
