This chapter derives the time-dependent Ginzburg–Landau equation from first principles, by relying on the same formal approach that has led to the time-dependent Gross–Pitaevskii equation of Chapter 28. Specifically, the time-dependent Ginzburg–Landau equation holds close to the critical temperature of the initial equilibrium preparation and in the (extreme) BCS limit of the BCS–BEC crossover, when the Cooper pairs are largely overlapping with each other. Care has to be exerted when dealing with the analytic properties in the wave-vector and frequency space of the normal and anomalous particle–particle bubbles.
This chapter provides a concise account of the salient features of the BCS–BEC crossover. After a brief historical review of the topic, the key features of the BCS–BEC crossover are recalled. In particular, the BCS wave function for the ground state is shown to contain the BEC state of composite bosons as a limiting situation, and the special role played in this context by the chemical potential is pointed out. The need for pairing fluctuations beyond mean field is also emphasized, together with the occurrence of two (coupling and temperature dependent) lengths, which measure the correlation either within a pair of fermions with opposite spins or among different pairs. The limiting physical situations corresponding to the Ginzburg–Landau and Gross–Pitaevskii equations are finally considered.
The linear response to a space- and time-dependent external disturbance of a system of dilute condensed composite bosons at zero temperature, as obtained from the linearized version of the time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii equation, is shown to result also from the strong-coupling limit of the time-dependent BCS (or broken-symmetry random-phase) approximation for the constituent fermions subject to the same external disturbance. In this way, it is possible to connect excited-state properties of the bosonic and fermionic systems by placing the Gross-Pitaevskii equation in perspective with the corresponding fermionic approximations.
On the basis of quantum hydrodynamical equations we derive a unitarity Schrödinger equation of a finite trapped superfluid Fermi gas valid in the whole interaction regime from BCS superfluid to BEC. This equation is just the Ginzburg–Laudau-type equation for the fermionic Cooper pairs in the BCS side, the Gross–Pitaevskii-type equation for the bosonic dimers in the BEC side, and a unitarity equation for a strongly interacting Fermi superfluid in the unitarity limit. By taking a modified Gauss-like trial wave function, we solve the unitarity Schrödinger equation, calculate the energy, chemical potential, sizes and profiles of the ground-state condensate, and discuss the properties of the ground state in the entire BCS-BEC crossover regimes.
Abstract We study the dynamics of a system of N interacting bosons in a disc-shaped trap, which is realised by an external potential that confines the bosons in one spatial dimension to an interval of length of order
ε ε . The interaction is non-negative and scaled in such a way that its scattering length is of order
ε/N ε / N , while its range is proportional to
(ε/N)β ( ε / N ) β with scaling parameter
β∈(0,1] β ∈ ( 0 , 1 ] . We consider the simultaneous limit
(N,ε)→(∞,0) ( N , ε ) → ( ∞ , 0 ) and assume that the system initially exhibits Bose–Einstein condensation. We prove that condensation is preserved by the N-body dynamics, where the time-evolved condensate wave function is the solution of a two-dimensional non-linear equation. The strength of the non-linearity depends on the scaling parameter
β β . For
β∈(0,1) β ∈ ( 0 , 1 ) , we obtain a cubic defocusing non-linear Schrödinger equation, while the choice
β=1 β = 1 yields a Gross–Pitaevskii equation featuring the scattering length of the interaction. In both cases, the coupling parameter depends on the confining potential.
In the first part of this thesis, we present a unified kinetic theory that describes the finite-temperature, non-equilibrium dynamics of a Bose-Einstein condensed gas interacting with a thermal cloud in a trap. This theory includes binary interactions to second order in the interaction potential and reduces to a diagonal quantum Boltzmann equation for Bogoliubov quasiparticles. The Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov interactions include the pairing field and are expressed as many-body T matrices to second order. The interactions thus include the correct renormalized scattering physics. This renormalized theory is automatically gapless. Thus, the excited Bogoliubov modes are naturally orthogonal to the condensate ground state. This kinetic theory is a complete second-order theory that reduces to the Gross-Pitaevskii equation and the quantum Boltzmann equation in the respective limits and thus is capable of describing the system over a wide temperature range. In the second part, we consider a many-body theory of a dilute Fermi gas near a Feshbach resonance. Experiments explore the crossover physics between the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) superfluidity of a two-spin Fermi gas, and the Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of composite bosons. We consider correlations between a composite boson and a fermion pair and show that such correlations are the minimal ingredients needed in a many-body theory to generate the correct boson-boson scattering length in the Bose-Einstein limit of the crossover. We also use imaginary-time propagation to find zero-temperature ground states in the BCS/BEC crossover. A cumulant expansion allows us to systematically include higher-order interactions between bosons and fermions. In particular, we calculate the Hartree term across the resonance. We further apply the cumulant-expansion method to thermal fermions and composite bosons interacting above the transition temperature in the normal phase. We numerically calculate the full time dependence in ramps across the resonance in this regime and find different two-body and many-body time scales in the system. We calculate molecular conversion efficiencies as a function of temperature and phase-space density, and find good agreement with results from JILA potassium experiments.