Ground-state fluctuations in finite Fermi systems

Abstract

We consider a small and fixed number of fermions in a trap. The ground state of the system is defined at T=0. For a given excitation energy, there are several ways of exciting the particles from this ground state. We formulate a method for calculating the number fluctuation in the ground state using microcanonical counting, and implement it for noninteracting fermions in harmonic confinement. This exact calculation for fluctuation, when compared with canonical or grand canonical ensemble averaging, gives considerably different results. This difference is expected to persist at low excitation even when the fermion number in the trap is large. For comparison, the well-known bosonic results are also given.