An improved calculation of the Third Virial Coefficient of a free anyon Gas

Abstract

For three anyons confined in a harmonic oscillator, only the class of states that interpolate nonlinearly with the statistical parameter contributes to the third virial coefficient of a free anyon gas. Rather than evaluating the full three-body partition function as was done in an earlier publication (Phys. Rev. {\bf A46}, 4693 (1992)), here only the nonlinear contribution is calculated, thus avoiding delicate cancellations between the irrelevant linear part and the two-body partition function. Our numerical results are consistent with the simple analytical form suggested recently by Myrheim and Olaussen.