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. In this paper, we try to construct density and spin linear response theories which are formally gauge invariant for a Fermi gas undergoing BCS-Bose-Einstein Condensation (BEC) crossover, especially below the superfluid transition temperature
Tc. We adapt a particular
t-matrix approach which is close to the
G0G formalism to incorporate non-condensed pairing in the normal state. We explicitly show that the fundamental constraints imposed by the Ward identities,
Q-limit Ward identity are indeed satisfied.
Recent experimental progress allows 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. In this paper, we try to construct density and spin linear response theories which are formally gauge invariant for a Fermi gas undergoing BCS-Bose-Einstein Condensation (BEC) crossover, especially below the superfluid transition temperature Tc . We adapt a particular t -matrix approach which is close to the G0G formalism to incorporate noncondensed pairing in the normal state. We explicitly show that the fundamental constraints imposed by the Ward identities and Q -limit Ward identity are indeed satisfied.
We present fundamental constraints required for a consistent linear response theory of fermionic superfluids and address temperatures both above and below the transition temperature Tc. 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 found to have difficulties with meeting these constraints. We summarize two distinct theoretical approaches which are, however, demonstrably compatible with gauge invariance and the compressibility sum rule. The first of these involves an extension of BCS theory to a mean field description of the BCS-Bose Einstein condensation crossover. The second is the simplest Nozieres Schmitt–Rink (NSR) treatment of pairing correlations in the normal state. As a point of comparison we focus on the compressibility κ of each and contrast the predictions above Tc. We note here that despite the compliance with sum rules, this NSR based scheme leads to an unphysical divergence in κ at the transition. Because of the delicacy of the various consistency requirements, the results of this paper suggest that avoiding this divergence may repair one problem while at the same time introducing others.