We present a theoretical study of the compressibility, $κ$, in a Fermi gas with attractive contact interactions, providing predictions for the strongly-attractive regime and the superfluid phase. Our work emphasizes the compressibility sum rule and gauge invariance as constraints on $κ$ and we show how within a particular $t$-matrix approach, these can be satisfied in the normal phase when no approximations are made. For tractability, approximations must be introduced, and it is believed that thermodynamical approaches to $κ$ are more reliable, than correlation function based schemes. Contrasting with other studies in the literature, we present thermodynamic calculations of $κ$; these yield semi-quantitative agreement with experiment and provide physical insight into similar results obtained via quantum Monte Carlo simulations.
We describe the relation between the isothermal atomic compressibility and density fluctuations in mixtures of two-component fermions with population or mass imbalance. We derive a generalized version of the fluctuation-dissipation theorem which is valid for both balanced and imbalanced Fermi-Fermi mixtures. Furthermore, we show that critical exponents for the compressibility can be extracted via an analysis of the density fluctuations when phase transitions occur as a function of population imbalance or interaction parameter. In addition, we demonstrate that in the presence of trapping potent…
We model fermions with an attractive interaction in an optical lattice with a single-band Hubbard model away from half-filling with on-site attraction $U$ and nearest neighbor hopping $t$. Our goal is to understand the crossover from BCS superfluidity in the weak attraction limit to the BEC of molecules in the strong attraction limit, with particular emphasis on how this crossover in an optical lattice differs from the much better studied continuum problem. We use a large-$N$ theory with Sp(2N) symmetry to study the fluctuations beyond mean field theory. At T=0, we calculate across the crossov…
We theoretically investigate the isothermal compressibility $κ_{T}$ in the normal state of an ultracold Fermi gas. Including pairing fluctuations, as well as preformed-pair formations, within the framework of the self-consistent $T$-matrix approximation (SCTMA), we evaluate the temperature dependence of this thermodynamic quantity over the entire BCS (Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer)-BEC (Bose-Einstein condensation) crossover region. While $κ_T$ in the weak-coupling BCS regime is dominated by Fermi atoms near the Fermi surface, correlations between tightly bound Cooper-pair molecules are found to pl…
In this paper we show how to redress a shortcoming of the path integral scheme for fermionic superfluids and superconductors. This approach is built around a simultaneous calculation of electrodynamics and thermodynamics. An important sum rule, the compressibility sum rule, fails to be satisfied in the usual calculation of the electromagnetic and thermodynamic response at the Gaussian fluctuation level. Here we present a path integral scheme to address this inconsistency. Specifically, at the leading order we argue that the superconducting gap should be calculated using a different saddle poin…
We discuss the evolution from BCS to Bose superfluidity for ultracold fermions in two-dimensions and in the presence of simultaneous spin-orbit and Zeeman fields. We analyze several thermodynamic properties to characterize different superfluid phases including pressure, compressibility, induced polarization, and spin susceptibility. Furthermore, we compute the momentum distribution and construct topological invariants for each of the superfluid phases.
We present fundamental constraints required for a consistent linear response theory of fermionic superfluids and address temperatures both above and below the transition temperature $T_c$. We emphasize two independent constraints, one associated with gauge invariance (and the related Ward identity) and another associated with the compressibility sum rule, both of which are satisfied in strict BCS theory. However, we point out that it is the rare many body theory which satisfies both of these. Indeed, well studied quantum Hall systems and random-phase approximations to the electron gas are foun…
We discuss the evolution from BCS to BEC superfluids in the presence of spin-orbit coupling, and show that this evolution is just a crossover in the balanced case. The dependence of several thermodynamic properties, such as the chemical potential, order parameter, pressure, entropy, isothermal compressibility and spin susceptibility tensor on the spin-orbit coupling and interaction parameter at low temperatures are analyzed. We studied both the case of equal Rashba and Dresselhaus (ERD) and the Rashba-only (RO) spin-orbit coupling. Comparisons between the two cases reveal several striking diff…
We consider a polarized Fermi gas in the BCS-BEC crossover region above the critical temperature within a T matrix formalism. By treating the mean-field like shift of the quasiparticle energies in a self-consistent manner, we avoid the known pathological behavior of the standard Nozieres-Schmitt-Rink approach in the polarized case, i.e., the polarization has the right sign and the spin polarizability is positive. The momentum distributions of the correlated system are computed and it is shown that, in the zero-temperature limit, they satisfy the Luttinger theorem. Results for the phase diagram…
We present a standard field theoretical derivation of the dynamic density and spin linear response functions of a dilute superfluid Fermi gas in the BCS-BEC crossover in both three and two dimensions. The derivation of the response functions is based on the elegant functional path integral approach which allows us to calculate the density-density and spin-spin correlation functions by introducing the external sources for the density and the spin density. Since the generating functional cannot be evaluated exactly, we consider two gapless approximations which ensure a gapless collective mode (G…
We investigate the BCS-BEC crossover taking into account an additional three-body interaction, which is essentially the scattering between the Cooper pairs and the newly formed bosons. We show that if the two-body interaction is attractive, the presence of this additional three-body term makes the crossover process a nonreversible one. Starting from a stable Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) state, crossover to BCS can be achieved; but if the BCS state is the starting point, instead of a stable BEC region, what the system crosses over to is a metastable condensed state.
Recent experimental progresses allow for exploring some important physical quantities of ultracold Fermi gases, such as the compressibility, spin susceptibility, viscosity, optical conductivity and spin diffusivity. Theoretically, these quantities can be evaluated from suitable linear response theories. For BCS superfluid, it has been found that the gauge invariant linear response theories can be fully consistent with some stringent consistency constraints. When the theory is generalized to stronger-than-BCS regime, one may meet serious difficulties to satisfy the gauge invariance conditions. …
We address the importance of symmetry and symmetry breaking on linear response theories of fermionic BCS superfluids. The linear theory of a noninteracting Fermi gas is reviewed and several consistency constraints are verified. The challenge to formulate linear response theories of BCS superfluids consistent with density and spin conservation laws comes from the presence of a broken U(1)$_{\textrm{EM}}$ symmetry associated with electromagnetism (EM) and we discuss two routes for circumventing this. The first route follows Nambu's integral-equation approach for the EM vertex function, but this …
We study thermodynamics of a two-species Feshbach-resonant atomic Fermi gas in a periodic potential, focusing in a deep optical potential where a tight binding model is applicable. We show that for more than half-filled band the gas exhibits a reentrant crossover with decreased detuning (increased attractive interaction), from a paired BCS superfluid to a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of molecules of holes, back to the BCS superfluid, and finally to a conventional BEC of diatomic molecules. This behavior is associated with the non-monotonic dependence of the chemical potential on detuning and…
The theoretical description of the critical temperature Tc of a Fermi superfluid dates back to the work by Gor'kov and Melik-Barkhudarov (GMB), who addressed it for a weakly-coupled (dilute) superfluid in the BCS (weak-coupling) limit of the BCS-BEC crossover. The point made by GMB was that particle-particle (pairing) excitations, which are responsible for superfluidity to occur below Tc, and particle-hole excitations, which give rise to screening also in a normal system, get effectively disentangled from each other in the BCS limit, thus yielding a reduction by a factor 2.2 of the value of Tc…
We calculate the parameters of the Ginzburg-Landau (GL) equation of a three-dimensional attractive Fermi gas around the superfluid critical temperature. We compare different levels of approximation throughout the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) to the Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC) regime. We show that the inclusion of Gaussian fluctuations strongly modifies the values of the Ginzburg-Landau parameters approaching the BEC regime of the crossover. We investigate the reliability of the Ginzburg-Landau theory, with fluctuations, studying the behavior of the coherence length and of the critical ro…
We study the effect of the induced interaction on the superfluid transition temperature of a Fermi gas with a BEC-BCS crossover. The Gorkov-Melik-Barkhudarov theory about the induced interaction is extended from the BCS side to the entire crossover, and the pairing fluctuation is treated in the approach by Nozières and Schmitt-Rink. At unitarity, the induced interaction reduces the transition temperature by about twenty percent. In the BCS limit, the transition temperature is reduced by a factor about 2.22, as found by Gorkov and Melik-Barkhudarov. Our result shows that the effect of the induc…
We discuss the derivation of a low-energy effective field theory of phase (Goldstone) and amplitude (Higgs) modes of the pairing field from a microscopic theory of attractive fermions. The coupled equations for Goldstone and Higgs fields are critically analyzed in the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) to Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) crossover both in three spatial dimensions and in two spatial dimensions. The crucial role of pair fluctuations is investigated, and the beyond-mean-field Gaussian theory of the BCS-BEC crossover is compared with available experimental data of the two-dimensional u…
We investigate the crossover from the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) state of weakly-bound Cooper pairs to the Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC) of strongly-bound molecular dimers in a gas of ultracold atoms loaded on a two-dimensional optical lattice. By using the the mean-field BCS equations of the emerging Hubbard model and the concept of off-diagonal-long-range-order for fermions we calculate analytically and numerically the pair binding energy, the energy gap and the condensate fraction of Cooper pairs as a function of interaction strength and filling fractor of atoms in the lattice at zero…
Quantum-size oscillations of the basic physical characteristics of a confined fermionic condensate are a well-known phenomenon. Its conventional understanding is based on the single-particle physics, whereby the oscillations follow the size-dependent changes in the single-particle density of states. Here we present a study of a cigar-shaped ultracold superfluid Fermi gas, which demonstrates an important many-body aspect of the quantum-size effects, overlooked previously. The many-body physics is revealed in the atypical crossover from the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) superfluid to the Bose-…
We investigate the macroscopic quantum tunneling of fermionic superfluids in the two-dimensional BCS-BEC crossover by using an effective tunneling energy which explicitly depends on the condensate fraction and the chemical potential of the system. We compare the mean-field effective tunneling energy with the beyond-mean-field one finding that the mean-field tunneling energy is not reliable in the BEC regime of the crossover. Then we solve the Josephson equations of the population imbalance and the relative phase calculating the frequency of tunneling oscillation both in the linear regime and i…
We study finite-temperature properties of a two-dimensional superfluid made of ultracold alkali-metal atoms in the BCS-BEC crossover. We investigate the region below the critical temperature $T_{BKT}$ of the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless phase transition, where there is quasi-condensation, by analyzing the effects of phase and amplitude fluctuations of the order parameter. In particular, we calculate the superfluid fraction, the sound velocity and the quasi-condensate fraction as a function of the temperature and of the binding energy of fermionic pairs.
This paper presents a comparison of two finite-temperature BCS-Bose Einstein condensation (BEC) crossover theories above the transition temperature: Nozieres Schmitt-Rink (NSR) theory and finite $T$-extended BCS-Leggett theory. The comparison is cast in the form of numerical studies of the behavior of the fermionic spectral function both theoretically and as constrained by (primarily) radio frequency (RF) experiments. Both theories include pair fluctuations and exhibit pseudogap effects, although the nature of this pseudogap is very different. The pseudogap in finite $T$-extended BCS-Leggett t…
We briefly discuss recent experiments on the BCS-BEC crossover with ultracold alkali-metal atoms both in three-dimensional configurations and two-dimensional ones. Then we analyze the quantum-field-theory formalism used to describe an attractive $D$-dimensional Fermi gas taking into account Gaussian fluctuations. Finally, we apply this formalism to obtain a reliable equation of state of the 2D system at low temperaratures in the BEC regime of the crossover by performing a meaningful dimensional regularization of the divergent zero-point energy of collective bosonic excitations.
The spin-orbit coupling (SOC) in degenerate Fermi gases can fundamentally change the fate of $s$-wave superfluids with strong Zeeman field and give rise to topological superfluids and associated Majorana zero modes. It also dramatically changes the thermodynamic properties of the superfluids. Here we report the anomalous isothermal compressibility $κ_T$ in this superfluids with both SOC and Zeeman field. We formulate this quantity from the Gibbs-Duhem equation and show that the contribution of $κ_T$ comes from the explicit contribution of chemical potential and implicit contribution of order p…
We review the BCS-BEC crossover in relativistic Fermi systems, including the QCD matter at finite density. In the first part we study the BCS-BEC crossover in a relativistic four-fermion interaction model and show how the relativistic effect affects the BCS-BEC crossover. In the second part, we investigate both two-color QCD at finite baryon density and pion superfluid at finite isospin density, by using an effective Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model. We will show how the model describes the weakly interacting diquark and pion condensates at low density and the BEC-BCS crossover at high density.
We present a theory of superconducting p-n junctions. We consider a 2-band model of doped bulk semiconductors with attractive interactions between the charge carriers and derive the superconducting order parameter, the quasiparticle density of states and the chemical potential as a function of semiconductor gap $Δ_0$ and the doping level $\varepsilon$. We verify previous results for the quantum phase diagram (QPD) for a system with constant density of states in the conduction and valence band, which show BCS-Superconductor to Bose-Einstein-Condensation (BEC) and BEC to Insulator transitions as…
We present a theory of a two-component atomic Fermi gas with tunable attractive contact interactions on a spherical shell going through the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) - Bose Einstein condensation (BEC) crossover, inspired by the realizations of spherical bubble traps for ultracold atoms in microgravity. The derivation follows the BCS-Leggett theory to obtain the gap and number equations. The BCS-BEC crossover can be induced by tuning the interaction, and the properly normalized gap and chemical potential exhibit universal behavior regardless of the planar or spherical geometry. Neverthele…
It is shown that a cluster expansion technique, which is usually applied in the high-temperature regime to calcutate virial coefficients, can be applied to evaluate the superfluid transition temperature of the BCS-BEC crossover à la Lee and Yang. The transition temperature is identified with the emergence of the singularity in the sum of a certain infinite series of cluster functions. In the weak-coupling limit, we reproduce the Thouless criterion and the number equation of Nozières and Schmitt-Rink, and hence the transition temperature of the BCS theory. In the strong-coupling limit, we repro…
We show that the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer state (BCS) and the Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) sides of the BCS-BEC crossover can be rigorously distinguished from each other by the extrema of the spectrum of the fermionic excitations. Moreover, we demonstrate that this formal distinction is realized as a non-equilibrium phase transition under radio frequency radiation. The BEC phase remains translationally invariant, whereas the BCS phase transforms into the supersolid phase. For a two-dimensional system this effect occurs at arbitrary small amplitude of the radiation field.
We investigate chiral symmetry breaking in a model of Dirac fermions with a complexified coupling constant whose imaginary part represents dissipation. We introduce a chiral chemical potential and observe that for real coupling a relativistic BCS-BEC crossover is realized. We solve the model in the mean-field approximation and construct the phase diagram as a function of the complex coupling. It is found that the dynamical mass increases under dissipation, although the chiral symmetry gets restored if dissipation exceeds a threshold.
We observe a long-lived solitary wave in a superfluid Fermi gas of $^6$Li atoms after phase-imprinting. Tomographic imaging reveals the excitation to be a solitonic vortex, oriented transverse to the long axis of the cigar-shaped atom cloud. The precessional motion of the vortex is directly observed, and its period is measured as a function of the chemical potential in the BEC-BCS crossover. The long period and the correspondingly large ratio of the inertial to the bare mass of the vortex are in good agreement with estimates based on superfluid hydrodynamics that we derive here using the known…
We investigate the quantum and thermal phase diagram of fermionic polar molecules loaded in a bilayer trapping potential with perpendicular dipole moment. We use both a BCS theory approach that is most realiable at weak-coupling and a strong-coupling approach that considers the two-body bound dimer states with one molecules in each layer as the relevant degree of freedom. The system ground state is a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of dimer bound states in the low density limit and a paired superfluid (BCS) state in the high density limit. At zero temperature, the intralayer repulsion is found …
We study pseudogap behaviors of ultracold Fermi gases in the BCS-BEC crossover region. We calculate the density of states (DOS), as well as the single-particle spectral weight, above the superfluid transition temperature $T_{\rm c}$ including pairing fluctuations within a $T$-matrix approximation. We find that DOS exhibits a pseudogap structure in the BCS-BEC crossover region, which is most remarkable near the unitarity limit. We determine the pseudogap temperature $T^*$ at which the pseudogap structure in DOS disappears. We also introduce another temperature $T^{**}$ at which the BCS-like dou…
We derive a generalized time-dependent Galilean-invariant density-functional (DF) equation appropriate to study the stationary and non-stationary properties of a trapped Fermi super-fluid in the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) to Bose-Einstein condensation (BCS) crossover. This equation is equivalent to a quantum hydrodynamical equation for a Fermi super-fluid. The bulk chemical potential of this equation has the proper (model-independent) dependence on the Fermi-Fermi scattering length in the BCS and BEC limits. We apply this DF equation to the study of stationary density profile and size of …
We present a systematic theoretical study of the BCS-BEC crossover problem in three-dimensional atomic Fermi gases at zero temperature with a spherical spin-orbit coupling which can be generated by a synthetic non-Abelian gauge field coupled to neutral fermions. Our investigations are based on the path integral formalism which is a powerful theoretical scheme for the study of the properties of the bound state, the superfluid ground state, and the collective excitations in the BCS-BEC crossover. At large spin-orbit coupling, the system enters the BEC state of a novel type of bound state (referr…
We determine the temperature $T$ dependence of first and second sound mode frequencies for trapped Fermi gases undergoing BCS to Bose Einstein condensation (BEC) crossover. Our results are based on the two fluid equations in conjunction with a microscopic calculation of thermodynamical variables. As in experiment and at unitarity, we show that the lowest radial breathing mode is $T$ independent. At finite $T$, higher order breathing modes strongly mix with second sound. Their complex $T$ dependence should provide an alternative way of measuring the transition temperature, $T_c$.
We develop a self-consistent theory unifying the description of a quantum Fermi gas in the presence of a Fano-Feshbach resonance in the whole phase diagram ranging from BCS to BEC type of superfluidity and from narrow to broad resonances, including the fluctuations beyond mean field. Our theory covers a part of the phase diagram which is not easily accessible by Quantum Monte Carlo simulations and is becoming interesting for a new class of experiments in cold atoms.
We investigate the phase diagram and the BCS-BEC crossover of a homogeneous three-component ultracold Fermi gas with a U(3) invariant attractive interaction. We show that the system at sufficiently low temperatures exhibits population imbalance, as well as fermionic pairing. We describe the crossover in this system, connecting the weakly interacting BCS regime of the partially population-imbalanced fermion pairing state and the BEC limit with three weakly interacting species of molecules, including pairing fluctuations within a t-matrix calculation of the particle self-energies.
We show that the long-distance behavior of the two-body density correlation functions and the Cooper-pair probability density of a balanced mixture of a two-component Fermi gas at $T = 0$, is universal along the BEC-BCS crossover. Our result is demonstrated by numerically solving the mean-field BCS model for different finite short-range atomic interaction potentials. We find an analytic expression for the correlation length in terms of the chemical potential and the energy gap at zero momentum.
We investigate the crossover from Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) superfluidity to Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) in a two-dimensional Fermi gas at T=0 using the fixed-node diffusion Monte Carlo method. We calculate the equation of state and the gap parameter as a function of the interaction strength, observing large deviations compared to mean-field predictions. In the BEC regime our results show the important role of dimer-dimer and atom-dimer interaction effects that are completely neglected in the mean-field picture. Results on Tan's contact parameter associated with short-range physics …
The crossover between low and high density regimes of exciton-polariton condensates is examined using a BCS wavefunction approach. Our approach is an extension of the BEC-BCS crossover theory for excitons, but includes a cavity photon field. The approach can describe both the low density limit, where the system can be described as a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of exciton-polaritons, and the high density limit, where the system enters a photon dominated regime. In contrast to the exciton BEC-BCS crossover where the system approaches an electron-hole plasma, the polariton high density limit h…
We analyze the BCS-BEC crossover transition of a balanced two component mixture of fermions interacting via a finite range potential, within a mean field approach. For the analysis we consider three finite range potentials cases describing the interaction between different Fermi species: a square well, an exponential and a Yukawa potential. The T = 0 thermodynamics analysis along the BCS-BEC crossover allow us to recognize the proper variables, for finite range interactions, that capture the transition from a thermodynamic non-universal behavior at unitarity, to its universal restoration. On t…
The subject of BCS - Bose Einstein condensation (BEC) crossover is particularly exciting because of its realization in ultracold Fermi gases and its possible relevance to high temperature superconductors. In the paper we review that body of theoretical work on this subject which represents a natural extension of the seminal papers by Leggett and by Nozieres and Schmitt-Rink (NSR). The former addressed only the ground state, now known as the "BCS-Leggett" wave-function and the key contributions of the latter pertain to calculations of the superfluid transition temperature $T_c$. These two paper…
We compute the shear viscosity, $η$, at general temperatures $T$, in a BCS-BEC crossover scheme which is demonstrably consistent with conservation laws. The study of $η$ is important because it constrains microscopic theories by revealing the excitation spectra. The onset of a normal state pairing gap and the contribution from pair degrees of freedom imply that $η$ at low $T$ becomes small, rather than exhibiting the upturn predicted by most others. Using the local density approximation, we find quite reasonable agreement with just-published experiments.
This chapter presents the crossover from the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) state of weakly-correlated pairs of fermions to the Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of diatomic molecules in the atomic Fermi gas. Our aim is to provide a pedagogical review of the BCS-BEC crossover, with an emphasis on the basic concepts, particularly those that are not generally known or are difficult to find in the literature. We shall not attempt to give an exhaustive survey of current research in the limited space here; where possible, we will direct the reader to more extensive reviews.
This paper gives a survey of a diagrammatic approach for fermionic pairing fluctuations, which are relevant to the BCS-BEC crossover realized with ultracold Fermi gases. Emphasis will be given to the physical intuition about the relevant physical processes that can be associated with this approach. Specific results will be presented for thermodynamic and dynamical quantities, where a critical comparison with alternative diagrammatic approaches will also be attempted.
The effective action describing the gapless Nambu-Goldstone, or Anderson-Bogoliubov, mode of a zero-temperature dilute Fermi gas at unitarity is derived up to next-to-leading order in derivatives from the microscopic theory. Apart from a next-to-leading order term that is suppressed in the BCS limit, the effective action obtained in the strong-coupling unitary limit is proportional to that in the weak-coupling BCS limit.
We theoretically investigate the shear viscosity $η$ in the BCS-BEC crossover regime of an ultracold Fermi gas with a Feshbach resonance. Within the framework of the strong-coupling self-consistent $T$-matrix approximation, we examine how a strong pairing interaction associated with a Feshbach resonance affects this transport coefficient, in the normal state above the superfluid phase transition temperature $T_{\rm c}$. We show that, while $η$ diverges in both the weak-coupling BCS and strong-coupling BEC limits, it becomes small in the unitary regime. The minimum of $η$ is obtained, not at th…
We present a theoretical study of the ground state of the BCS-BEC crossover in dilute two-dimensional Fermi gases. While the mean-field theory provides a simple and analytical equation of state, the pressure is equal to that of a noninteracting Fermi gas in the entire BCS-BEC crossover, which is not consistent with the features of a weakly interacting Bose condensate in the BEC limit and a weakly interacting Fermi liquid in the BCS limit. The inadequacy of the 2D mean-field theory indicates that the quantum fluctuations are much more pronounced than those in 3D. In this work, we show that the …
We investigate single-particle excitations and strong-coupling effects in the BCS-BEC crossover regime of a superfluid Fermi gas. Including phase and amplitude fluctuations of the superfluid order parameter within a $T$-matrix theory, we calculate the superfluid density of states (DOS), as well as single-particle spectral weight, over the entire BCS-BEC crossover region below the superfluid transition temperature $T_{\rm c}$. We clarify how the pseudogap in the normal state evolves into the superfluid gap, as one passes through $T_{\rm c}$. While the pseudogap in DOS continuously evolves into …
Motivated by the recent realization of the Haldane model in shaking optical lattice, we investigate the effects of attractive interaction and BEC-BCS crossover in this model at and away from half filling. We show that, contrary to the usual s-wave BEC-BCS crossover in the lattice, a topological superfluid with Chern number C=2 appears in an extended region of phase space for intermediate strength of the attractive interaction in the interaction-density plane. When inversion symmetry is broken, a new gapless topological state is realized. We also investigate the fluctuations in these superfluid…
We develop a microscopic model to describe the Josephson dynamics between two superfluid reservoirs of ultracold fermionic atoms which accounts for the dependence of the critical current on both the barrier height and the interaction strength along the crossover from BCS to BEC. Building on a previous study [F. Meier & W. Zwerger, Phys. Rev. A, 64 033610 (2001)] of weakly-interacting bosons, we derive analytic results for the Josephson critical current at zero temperature for homogeneous and trapped systems at arbitrary coupling. The critical current exhibits a maximum near the unitarity limit…
We theoretically investigate the recent photoemission-type experiment on $^{40}$K Fermi gases done by JILA group. Including pairing fluctuations within a strong-coupling $T$-matrix theory, as well as effects of a harmonic trap within the local density approximation, we calculate photoemission spectra in the BCS (Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer)-BEC (Bose-Einstein condensation) crossover region. We show that the energy resolution of the current photoemission experiment is enough to detect the pseudogap phenomenon. We also show how the pseudogap in single-particle excitations continuously changes into…
We study the persistent currents of an attractive Fermi gas confined in a tightly-confining ring trap and subjected to an artificial gauge field all through the BCS-BEC crossover. At weak attractions, on the BCS side, fermions display a parity effect in the persistent currents, ie their response to the gauge field is paramagnetic or diamagnetic depending on the number of pairs on the ring. At resonance and on the BEC side of the crossover we find a doubling of the periodicity of the ground-state energy as a function of the artificial gauge field and disappearance of the parity effect, indicati…
We review the functional renormalization group (RG) approach to the BCS-BEC crossover for an ultracold gas of fermionic atoms. Formulated in terms of a scale-dependent effective action, the functional RG interpolates continuously between the atomic or molecular microphysics and the macroscopic physics on large length scales. We concentrate on the discussion of the phase diagram as a function of the scattering length and the temperature which is a paradigm example for the non-perturbative power of the functional RG. A systematic derivative expansion provides for both a description of the many-b…
