Natural orbitals and their occupation numbers for free anyons in the magnetic gauge

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the natural orbitals and occupation numbers of two non-interacting anyons in a harmonic trap, revealing a power-law decay in occupation numbers and confirming theoretical predictions with numerical results.

Contribution

It derives the asymptotic form of natural orbitals and occupation numbers for anyons in the boson magnetic gauge, showing a specific power-law decay and numerical agreement.

Findings

Occupation numbers decay as n^{-(4+2α)}

Numerical results agree with theoretical predictions

Results apply to both boson and fermion magnetic gauges

Abstract

We investigate the properties of natural orbitals and their occupation numbers of the ground state of two non-interacting anyons characterised by the fractional statistics parameter $\alpha$ and confined in a harmonic trap. We work in the boson magnetic gauge where the anyons are modelled as composite bosons with magnetic flux quanta attached to their positions. We derive an asymptotic form of the weakly occupied natural orbitals, and show that their corresponding (ordered descendingly) occupation numbers decay according to the power law $n^{-(4+2\alpha)}$, where $n$ is the index of the natural orbital. We find remarkable numerical agreement of the theory with the natural orbitals and their occupation numbers computed from the spectral decomposition of the system's wavefunction. We explain that the same results apply to the fermion magnetic gauge.