Fractional dimensional Hilbert spaces and Haldane's exclusion statistics

Abstract

We examine the notion of Haldane's dimension and the corresponding statistics in a probabilistic spirit. Motivated by the example of dimensional-regularization we define the dimension of a space as the trace of a diagonal `unit operator', where the diagonal matrix elements are not, in general, unity but are probabilities to place the system into a given state. These probabilities are uniquely defined by the rules of Haldane's statistics. We calculate the second virial coefficient for our system and demonstrate agreement with Murthy and Shankar's calculation. The partition function for an ideal gas of the particles, a state-counting procedure, the entropy and a distribution function for the particles are investigated using our probabilistic definition. We compare our results with previous calculations of exclusion statistics.