Cold atoms at unitarity and semiclassical ground state of a Fermi gas for Haldane-Wu exclusion statistics

We investigate finite particle systems of cold atoms bound in a local potential V(r). We derive the ground state energy and the particle density using a recently developed semiclassical theory (2008 Phys. Rev. Lett. 100 200408), and assuming the particles are described by the Haldane-Wu fractional exclusion statistics (FES) at unitarity. This approach is applied to atoms trapped into a three dimensional harmonic oscillator. We show that the parameter-free FES semiclassical theory yields results that are consistent with numerical simulations by Chang and Bertsch [2007 Phys. Rev A 76 021603(R)] and Bulgac (2007 Phys. Rev. A 76 040502).