Recent calculations with an effective isospin-dependent contact interaction show the possibility of the crossover from superfluidity of neutron Cooper pairs in the
1S0 pairing channel to Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of di-neutron bound states in dilute nuclear matter. The density and spin correlation functions are calculated for a di-neutron condensate in asymmetric nuclear matter with the aim of finding the possible features of the BCS-BEC crossover. It is shown that the zero-momentum transfer spin correlation function satisfies the sum rule at zero temperature. In symmetric nuclear matter, the density correlation function changes sign at low momentum transfer across the BCS-BEC transition, and this feature can be considered as a signature of the crossover. At finite isospin asymmetry, this criterion gives too large a value for the critical asymmetry ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{c}^{d}~0.9$, at which the BEC state is quenched. Therefore, it can be trusted for the description of the density-driven BCS-BEC crossover of neutron pairs only at small isospin asymmetry. This result generalizes the conclusion of the study in Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 090402 (2005), where the change of sign of the density correlation function at low momentum transfer in two-component quantum fermionic atomic gas with the balanced populations of fermions of different species was considered as an unambiguous signature of the BCS-BEC transition.
A general analysis of Meissner effect and spin susceptibility of a uniform superconductor in an asymmetric two-component fermion system is presented in nonrelativistic field theory approach. We found that the pairing mechanism dominates the magnetization property of superconductivity and the asymmetry enhances the paramagnetism of the system. At the turning point from BCS to breached pairing superconductivity, the Meissner mass squared and spin susceptibility are divergent at zero temperature. In the breached pairing state induced by chemical potential difference and mass difference between the two kinds of fermions, the system goes from paramagnetism to diamagnetism, when the mass ratio of the two species increases.
We suggest that the extension of the Racah seniority description of strongly interacting fermions in the nuclear shell model is directly generalizable to describe pairing of atoms in cold Fermi systems. We illustrate this by the fermionic pairing in the much studied cold two-component gas of Li atoms. Our pairing interaction is two orders of magnitude stronger than that used in the usual BCS approach. We also explain why the Racah scheme is less applicable to nuclei, and discuss the similarities of the strongly-coupled matter in cold fermion systems and the new form of matter found in RHIC close to T_c.