Pauli crystals in harmonic trap and on a sphere

Abstract

We study configurations maximizing N-particle probability distributions of non-interacting particles obeying Fermi statistics as discussed in [1]. We consider two different types of particles' confinement: (i) trapping in a harmonic potential and (ii) constraining to the surface of a sphere. In such settings the most probable arrangements of particles correspond to characteristic geometric patterns resulting from the combined effect of confinement and the Pauli exclusion principle. We discuss the geometry of these optimal configurations as well as two different methods of extracting these shapes from a number of single shot pictures of the system. The post-selection method which does not assume a priori any information on the optimal configurations is illustrated in detail.