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 determine the size of the critical region of the superfluid transition in the BCS-BEC crossover of a three-dimensional fermion gas, using a renormalization-group approach to a bosonic theory of pairing fluctuations. For the unitary Fermi gas, we find a sizable critical region $[T_G^-,T_G^+]$, of order $T_c$, around the transition temperature $T_c$ with a pronounced asymmetry: $|T_G^+-T_c|/|T_G^--T_c|sim8$. The critical region is strongly suppressed on the BCS side of the crossover but remains important on the BEC side.
Strongly correlated Fermi systems with pairing interactions become superfluid below a critical temperature $T_c$. The extent to which such pairing correlations alter the behavior of the liquid at temperatures $T > T_c$ is a subtle issue that remains an area of debate, in particular regarding the appearance of the so-called pseudogap in the BCS-BEC crossover of unpolarized spin-$1/2$ nonrelativistic matter. To shed light on this, we extract several quantities of crucial importance at and around the unitary limit, namely: the odd-even staggering of the total energy, the spin susceptibility, the pairing correlation function, the condensate fraction, and the critical temperature $T_c$, using a non-perturbative, constrained-ensemble quantum Monte Carlo algorithm.
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 has strongly correlated electron-hole pairs. At intermediate densities, there is a regime with BCS-like properties, with a peak at non-zero momentum of the singlet pair function. We calculate the expected photoluminescence and give several experimental signatures of the crossover.
The phase transition to superfluidity and the BCS-BEC crossover for an ultracold gas of fermionic atoms is discussed within a functional renormalization group approach. Non-perturbative flow equations, based on an exact renormalization group equation, describe the scale dependence of the flowing or average action. They interpolate continuously from the microphysics at atomic or molecular distance scales to the macroscopic physics at much larger length scales, as given by the interparticle distance, the correlation length, or the size of the experimental probe. We discuss the phase diagram as a function of the scattering length and the temperature and compute the gap, the correlation length and the scattering length for molecules. Close to the critical temperature, we find the expected universal behavior. Our approach allows for a description of the few-body physics (scattering and molecular binding) and the many-body physics within the same formalism.
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 which arises from the competition between the increasing condensate fraction and a decrease of the chemical potential along the evolution from the BCS to the BEC limit. Our results agree quantitatively with numerical simulations and recent experimental data.