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arXiv:0911.0849 · Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics Letters

“Moth-eaten effect” driven by Pauli blocking, revealed for cooper pairs

W. V. Pogosov, Monique Combescot

Published Oct 1, 2010• 13 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We extend the well-known Cooper’s problem beyond one pair and study how this dilute limit is connected to the many-pair Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) condensate. We find that, all over from the dilute to the dense regime of pairs, Pauli blocking induces the same “moth-eaten effect” as the one existing for composite boson excitons. This effect makes the average pair binding energy decrease linearly with pair number, bringing it, in the standard BCS configuration, to half the single-pair value. This proves that, at odds with popular understanding, the BCS gap is far larger than the broken pair energy. The increase comes from Pauli blocking between broken and unbroken pairs. Possible link between our result and the crossover between the Bose-Einstein condensate and BCS condensate is also discussed.

DOI
10.1134/s0021364010190112

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We extend the well-known Cooper’s problem beyond one pair and study how this dilute limit is connected to the many-pair Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) condensate. We find that, all over from the dilute to the dense regime of pairs, Pauli blocking induces the same “moth-eaten effect” as the one existing for composite boson excitons. This effect makes the average pair binding energy decrease linearly with pair number, bringing it, in the standard BCS configuration, to half the single-pair value. This proves that, at odds with popular understanding, the BCS gap is far larger than the broken pair energy. The increase comes from Pauli blocking between broken and unbroken pairs. Possible link between our result and the crossover between the Bose-Einstein condensate and BCS condensate is also discussed.
Chapter 8 deals with the Bogoliubov approach to the BCS problem. This approach is of fundamental interest because it gives a mathematical support to the BCS ansatz, which was simply proposed by Bardeen, Cooper, and Schrieffer as a trial wave function. This chapter shows that the BCS ansatz corresponds to the ground-state wave function of the one-body Bogoliubov Hamiltonian constructed from the BCS Hamiltonian. This mathematical support is highly welcome because the BCS ansatz contains the questionable idea that composite bosons condense, like elementary bosons, all into the same state, even if the product of N identical electron pair operators substantially differs from that of N single pair operators when N gets large, owing to the moth-eaten effect induced by the Pauli exclusion principle.
While the one-Cooper-pair problem is now a textbook exercise, the energy of two pairs of electrons with opposite spins and zero total momentum has not been derived yet, the exact handling of Pauli blocking between bound pairs being not that easy for N=2N=2N=2 already. The two-Cooper-pair problem however is quite enlightening to understand the very peculiar role played by the Pauli exclusion principle in superconductivity. Pauli blocking is known to drive the change from 1 to NNN pairs but no precise description of this continuous change has been given so far. Using Richardson's procedure, we here prove that Pauli blocking increases the free part of the two-pair ground-state energy but decreases the binding part when compared to two isolated pairs---the excitation gap to break a pair however increasing from one to two pairs. When extrapolated to the dense BCS regime, the decrease in the pair binding while the gap increases strongly indicates that at odd with common belief, the average pair binding energy cannot be on the order of the gap.
Abstract We theoretically investigate the Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer (BCS) to Bose–Einstein condensation (BEC) crossover in a two-dimensional Fermi gas with the finite-range interaction by using the Hartree–Fock–Bogoliubov theory. Expanding the scattering phase shift in terms of the scattering length and effective range, we discuss the effect of the finite-range interaction on the pairing and thermodynamic properties. By solving the gap equation and the number equation self-consistently, we numerically calculate the effective-range dependence of the pairing gap, chemical potential, and pair size throughout the BCS–BEC crossover. Our results would be useful for further understanding of low-dimensional many-body problems.
Abstract This book bridges the gap between two major fields in condensed matter physics: semiconductors and superconductors. Through an original perspective that their key particles, excitons and Cooper pairs, are composite bosons (cobosons), the book raises fundamental questions: how does the Pauli exclusion principle affect the fermionic components of bosonic particles at the microscopic level, and how does this appear in the coboson many-body physics at the macroscopic level? What insights would the study of Wannier excitons, Frenkel excitons, and Cooper pairs provide about the “bosonic condensation” of composite bosons and how it differs from the Bose-Einstein condensation of elementary bosons? The book starts from a solid mathematical and physical foundation to derive excitons and Cooper pairs and introduces Shiva diagrams as a graphic support to grasp the many-body physics induced by fermion exchange in the absence of fermion-fermion interaction–a mechanism not visualized in standard Feynman diagrams. The book also covers composite bosons related to excitons: trions, biexcitons, and polaritons. The last part of the book is devoted to composite boson condensation, from the prototypical Bose-Einstein condensation of free elementary bosons and the consequence of interaction, to interacting electrons in the dense regime, to electron-hole pairs in the dense and dilute regimes. Advanced undergraduate and graduate students in physics, with no prior background, will benefit from this book, as numerous appendices provide the materials required to follow the various chapters. The concepts and formalism presented should also prove useful in research on ultracold atomic gases, polariton condensation, and quantum information.
This article gives a detailed review of our current theoretical understanding of the crossover from cooperative Cooper pairing to independent bound-state formation and Bose–Einstein condensation in Fermi systems with increasing attractive interactions. Introduction There are two well-known paradigms for understanding the phenomena of superconductivity and superfluidity: (I) BCS theory [1], in which the normal state is a degenerate Fermi liquid that undergoes a pairing instability at a temperature T c ≪ ε f , the degeneracy scale. The formation of Cooper pairs and their condensation (macroscopic occupation of a single quantum state) both occur simultaneously at the transition temperature T c . (II) Bose–Einstein condensation (BEC) of bosons at a T c of the order of their degeneracy temperature. At a fundamental level these bosons (for example, 4 He or excitons) are invariably composite objects made up of an even number of fermions. The composite particles form at some very high temperature scale of the order of their dissociation temperature T dissoc , and these “pre-formed” bosons then condense at the BEC T c ≪ T dissoc . In most cases of experimental interest the system under consideration clearly falls into one category or the other. For instance, 3 He is a Fermi superfluid described by (I) whereas 4 He is a Bose superfluid (II). Essentially all cases of superconductivity in metals that we understand reasonably well are much closer to (I) than to (II), as evidenced by the existence of fermionic quasiparticles above T c .
We study a two-dimensional paired Fermi system in which altermagnetism produces a spin splitting that depends on momentum. The interaction strength is described through the two-body binding energy, so that the chemical potential and pairing gap evolve self-consistently from the weak-coupling Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) regime to the strong-coupling Bose-Einstein-condensate (BEC) regime at fixed density. The stability of the uniform paired state is examined by giving the pairs a small center-of-mass momentum and following the resulting change in free energy. We show that at zero temperature, the phase stiffness follows a universal quadratic suppression, J/J0=1−(α/α0)2J/J_0 = 1 - (α/α_0)^2J/J0​=1−(α/α0​)2, across the entire fully gapped crossover regime. Deviations from this relation emerge only on the BCS side upon the opening of gapless Bogoliubov pockets, which rapidly reduce the stiffness and can trigger an instability toward finite-momentum pairing. In the BEC regime, this universal quadratic correction corresponds to the altered effective mass of the tightly bound composite bosons. The model therefore provides a simple setting in which to compare altermagnetic pair breaking on the BCS and BEC sides of the crossover.