Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences
Quantum fluctuations in the time-dependent BCS–BEC crossover
Bernhard M. Breid, J. R. Anglin
Abstract
We describe the time-dependent formation of a molecular Bose-Einstein condensate from a BCS state of fermionic atoms as a result of slow sweeping through a Feshbach resonance. We apply a path integral approach for the molecules, and use two-body adiabatic approximations to solve the atomic evolution in the presence of the classical molecular fields, obtaining an effective action for the molecules. In the narrow resonance limit, the problem becomes semiclassical, and we discuss the growth of the molecular condensate in the saddle point approximation. Considering this time-dependent process as an analogue of the cosmological Zurek scenario, we compare the way condensate growth is driven in this rigorous theory with its phenomenological description via time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau theory.