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 ultracold Fermi superfluid.
In the first part of this chapter we analyze the contact intensity
C, which has been introduced by Tan [Ann. Phys. 323, 2952 (2008)] and appears in several physical observables of the strongly correlated two-component Fermi gas. We calculate the contact
C in the full BCS-BEC crossover for a uniform superfluid Fermi gas by using an efficient parametetrization of the ground-state energy. In the case of harmonic confinement, within the Thomas-Fermi approximation, we derive analytical formulas of
C in the three relevant limits of the crossover. In the second part of this chapter we discuss the extended superfluid hydrodynamics we have recently proposed to describe static and dynamical collective properties of the Fermi gas in the BCS-BEC crossover. In particular we show the relation with the effective theory for the Goldstone field derived by Son and Wingate [Ann. Phys. 321, 197 (2006)] on the basis of conformal invariance. By using our equations of extended hydrodynamics we determine nonlinear sound waves, static response function and structure factor of a generic superfluid at zero temperature.
We determine the effects of quantum fluctuations about the
T=0 mean-field solution of the BCS-BEC crossover in a dilute Fermi gas using the functional integral method. These fluctuations are described in terms of the zero-point motion of collective modes and the virtual scattering of gapped quasiparticles. We calculate their effects on various measurable properties, including chemical potential, ground-state energy, the gap, the speed of sound and the Landau critical velocity. At unitarity, we find excellent agreement with quantum Monte Carlo and experimental results. In the BCS limit, we show analytically that we obtain Fermi liquid interaction corrections to thermodynamics including the Hartree shift. In the Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) limit, we show that the theory leads to an approximate description of the reduction of the scattering length for bosonic molecules and also obtain quantum depletion of the Lee-Yang form. At the end of the paper, we describe a method to include feedback of quantum fluctuations into the gap equation, and discuss the problems of self-consistent calculations in satisfying Goldstone's theorem and obtaining ultraviolet finite results at unitarity.