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We discuss the exact particle number counting statistics of degenerate ideal Bose gases in the microcanonical, canonical, and grand-canonical ensemble, respectively, for various trapping potentials. We then invoke the Maxwell's Demon ensemble [P. Navez et al., Phys. Rev. Lett.(1997)] and show that for large total number of particles the root-mean-square fluctuation of the condensate occupation scales delta n0 proportional to [T/Tc]r Ns with scaling exponents r=3/2, s=1/2 for the 3D harmonic oscillator trapping potential, and r=1, s=2/3 for the 3D box. We derive an explicit expression for r and s in terms of spatial dimension D and spectral index sigma of the single- particle energy spectrum. Our predictions also apply to systems where Bose-Einstein condensation does not occur. We point out that the condensate fluctuations in the microcanonical and canonical ensemble respect the principle of thermodynamic equivalence.
We analyse occupation number fluctuations of an ideal Bose gas in a trap which is isolated from theenvironment with respect to particle exchange (canonical ensemble). We show that in contrast to the predictions of thegrand- canonical ensemble, the counting statistics of particles in the trap ground state changes from monotonously decreasing above the condensation temperature to single-peaked below that temperature. For the exactly solvable case of a harmonic oscillator trapping potential in one spatial dimension we extract a Landau-Ginzburg functional which - despite the non- interacting nature of the system - displays the characteristic behaviour of a weakly interacting Bose gas. We also compare our findings with the usual treatment which is base on the grand-canonical ensemble. We show that for an ideal Bose gas neither are the grand-canonical and canonical ensemble thermodynamically equivalent, nor the grand-canonical ensemble can be viewed as a small system in diffusive contact with a particle reservoir.