  We consider a small and fixed number of fermions (bosons) in a trap. The
ground state of the system is defined at T=0. For a given excitation energy,
there are several ways of exciting the particles from this ground state. We
formulate a method for calculating the number fluctuation in the ground state
using microcanonical counting, and implement it for small systems of
noninteracting fermions as well as bosons in harmonic confinement. This exact
calculation for fluctuation, when compared with canonical ensemble averaging,
gives considerably different results, specially for fermions. This difference
is expected to persist at low excitation even when the fermion number in the
trap is large.
