By including the effect of a trap with characteristic energy given by the Fermi temperature TF in a two-body two-channel model for Feshbach resonances, we reproduce the experimental closed-channel fraction Z across the BEC-BCS crossover and into the BCS regime of a 6Li atomic Fermi gas. We obtain the expected behavior Z∝TF at unitarity, together with the recently measured proportionality constant. Our results are also in agreement with recent measurements of the Z dependency on TF on the BCS side, where a significant discrepancy between experiments and theory has been repeatedly reported.
A debated issue in the physics of the BCS-BEC crossover with trapped Fermi atoms is to identify characteristic properties of the superfluid phase. Recently, a condensate fraction was measured on the BCS side of the crossover by sweeping the system in a fast (nonadiabatic) way from the BCS to the Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) sides, thus "projecting" the initial many-body state onto a molecular condensate. We analyze here the theoretical implications of these projection experiments, by identifying the appropriate quantum-mechanical operator associated with the measured quantities and relating them to the many-body correlations occurring in the BCS-BEC crossover. Calculations are presented over wide temperature and coupling ranges, by including pairing fluctuations on top of the mean field.