The strongly attractive Fermi gas in the BCS-BEC crossover is efficiently described in terms of coupled fermions and fermion pairs, or molecules. We compute the spectral functions of both fermions and pairs in the normal state near the superfluid transition using a Keldysh formulation in real frequency. The mutual influence between fermions and pairs is captured by solving the self-consistent Luttinger-Ward equations: These include both the damping of fermions by scattering off dressed pairs and the decay of pair states by dissociation into two dressed fermions. The pair spectra encode contact correlations between fermions and form the basis for computing dynamical response functions and transport properties.
The strongly attractive Fermi gas in the BCS-BEC crossover is efficiently described in terms of coupled fermions and fermion pairs, or molecules. We compute the spectral functions of both fermions and pairs in the normal state near the superfluid transition using a Keldysh formulation in real frequency. The mutual influence between fermions and pairs is captured by solving the self-consistent Luttinger-Ward equations: These include both the damping of fermions by scattering off dressed pairs and the decay of pair states by dissociation into two dressed fermions. The pair spectra encode contact correlations between fermions and form the basis for computing dynamical response functions and transport properties.
We calculate nonperturbative self-consistent fermionic and bosonic spectral functions of ultracold Fermi gases with the spectral functional approach. This approach allows for a direct real-time computation of nonperturbative correlation functions, and in the present work we use spectral Dyson-Schwinger equations. We focus on the normal phase of the spin-balanced Fermi gas and provide numerical results for the full fermionic and bosonic spectral functions. The spectral functions are then used for the determination of the equation of state, the Tan contact, and ejection rf spectra at unitarity. These results are compared to experimental data, the self-consistent T-matrix approach, and lattice results. Our approach offers a wide range of applications, including the ab initio calculation of transport and spectral properties of the superfluid phase in the BCS-BEC crossover.
The pseudogap phenomenon is a hallmark of strongly interacting Fermi systems, from high-temperature superconductors to ultracold atomic gases, yet its precise origin remains debated. Here we calculate the spectral function and rf spectra of ultracold atomic gases across the BCS-BEC crossover to quantitatively investigate the pairing mechanism of the pseudogap. We advance our pairing fluctuation theory by incorporating particle-hole fluctuations, which renormalize the effective interaction in the particle-particle channel. To achieve quantitative accuracy, we employ a full numerical convolution for the pair susceptibility and self-energy, moving beyond previous analytic pseudogap approximations. This convolution approach automatically captures two critical effects: (i) the full spectral broadening of fermions due to finite pair lifetime, and (ii) the previously neglected pair-hole scattering effect, which manifests as a substantial Hartree energy. We calculate the spectral function, and use rf spectral intensity maps and energy distribution curves to determine the quasiparticle dispersion. From these, we extract the pseudogap Δ, Hartree energy, and chemical potential, mapping their evolution across the crossover. Our results show that the pseudogap emerges continuously as the system moves from the BCS regime toward BEC. Furthermore, the pair spectral function reveals that pairs become diffusive at energies above 2Δ, indicating that the pair lifetime is governed by virtual binding and unbinding processes. Our calculations achieve quantitative agreement with recent experiments across the BCS-BEC crossover, including at unitarity, providing strong support for a pairing-based origin of the pseudogap as described by our pairing fluctuation theory.
Ultracold atomic gases are a powerful tool to experimentally study strongly correlated quantum many-body systems. In particular, ultracold Fermi gases with tunable interactions have allowed to realize the famous BEC-BCS crossover from a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of molecules to a Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) superfluid of weakly bound Cooper pairs. However, large parts of the excitation spectrum of fermionic superfluids in the BEC-BCS crossover are still unexplored. In this work, we use Bragg spectroscopy to measure the full momentum-resolved low-energy excitation spectrum of strongly interacting ultracold Fermi gases. This enables us to directly observe the smooth transformation from a bosonic to a fermionic superfluid that takes place in the BEC-BCS crossover. We also use our spectra to determine the evolution of the superfluid gap and find excellent agreement with previous experiments and self-consistent T-matrix calculations both in the BEC and crossover regime. However, toward the BCS regime a calculation that includes the effects of particle-hole correlations shows better agreement with our data.
We provide a comprehensive theoretical study of the radio-frequency (rf) spectra of a two-component Fermi gas with balanced populations in the normal region of the temperature-vs-coupling phase diagram. In particular, rf spectra are analyzed in terms of two characteristic peaks, which can be either distinct or overlapping. On the BEC side of the crossover, these two contributions are associated with a fermionic quasi-particle peak and a bosonic-like contribution due to pairing. On the BCS side of the crossover, the two peaks are instead associated with interactions between particles occurring, respectively, at high or low relative momenta. Through this two-peak analysis, we show how and to what extent the correlation between the widths of the rf spectra and the pair size, previously identified in the superfluid phase at low temperature, can be extended to the normal phase, as well as how the temperature-vs-coupling phase diagram of the BCS-BEC crossover can be partitioned in a number of distinct physical sectors. Several analytic results for the shape and widths of the rf spectra are also derived in appropriate temperature and coupling limits.
A self-consistent theory is derived to describe the BCS--Bose-Einstein-condensate crossover for a strongly interacting Fermi gas with a Feshbach resonance. In the theory the fluctuation of the dressed molecules, consisting of both preformed Cooper pairs and ``bare'' Feshbach molecules, has been included within a self-consistent T-matrix approximation, beyond the Nozi\`eres and Schmitt-Rink strategy considered by Ohashi and Griffin. The resulting self-consistent equations are solved numerically to investigate the normal-state properties of the crossover at various resonance widths. It is found that the superfluid transition temperature Tc increases monotonically at all widths as the effective interaction between atoms becomes more attractive. Furthermore, a residue factor Zm of the molecule's Green function and a complex effective mass have been determined to characterize the fraction and lifetime of Feshbach molecules at Tc. Our many-body calculations of Zm agree qualitatively well with recent measurments of the gas of 6Li atoms near the broad resonance at 834G. The crossover from narrow to broad resonances has also been studied.
The purpose of this thesis is the study of an attractive Fermi gas in the normal phase throughout the BCS-BEC crossover by means of diagrammatic approaches based on the t-matrix approximation. More specifically, the calculation is implemented by including different degrees of self-consistency in the t-matrix equations, from the non-self-consistent to the fully self-consistent (or Luttinger-Ward) approach. In the first part of the thesis, we perform a systematic and unbiased comparative study of all the five variants of the t-matrix approach with different degrees of selfconsistency considered thus far in the literature. The analysis is performed by calculating several thermodynamic and dynamical quantities of the spin-balanced Fermi gas in the normal phase within all the approaches. We also compare these results with the available quantum Monte Carlo (QMC), diagrammatic Monte Carlo (DMC) and experimental data. In the comparison, the fully self-consistent t-matrix approach turns up to be the best to describe thermodynamic quantities, however for dynamical quantities partially or non-self-consistent approaches appear to work better. In the second part of the thesis, we investigate pairing correlations in the normal phase of the spin-balanced system within the fully self-consistent t-matrix approach. We first calculate the pair correlation function g↑↓(ρ) and the pair coherence length ξpair for various couplings and temperatures. We then develop a new approach, based on the two-body Green’s function formalism, to calculate the number of preformed pairs in the normal phase. The approach is used to describe the experimental data on this quantity by the group of Prof. Denschlag in Ulm. In order to compare our calculation with the experiment, the fully self-consistent t-matrix approach is extended to consider a Fermi gas in a harmonic trapping potential. In general, very good agreement is found with experimental data. In the final part of the thesis, we present some preliminary results for the spinimbalanced Fermi gas, focusing on the temperature-coupling-polarization phase diagram and on T = 0 and finite T thermodynamic quantities. In this analysis, we show that the Luttinger theorem for an imbalanced Fermi gas at T = 0 is satisfied within the fully self-consistent t-matrix approach, and we present the extension of the calculation of the pair correlation function g↑↓(ρ) to the spin-imbalanced case.