The low-temperature evolution from BCS to Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) for a two-dimensional d-wave superconductor is discussed at the saddle point (mean field) level. A systematic study of the changes of low-temperature thermodynamic properties is presented as a function of the charge carrier density and fixed interaction. It has been found that when the interaction strength is large enough, there is a critical density below which the single quasiparticle excitation spectrum develops a gap. At higher density of carriers and lower interaction strength (towards the BCS regime) the superconductor has gapless quasiparticle excitations, while at lower densities and higher interactions (towards the BEC regime) quasiparticle excitations are fully gapped. The appearence of a full gap in the quasiparticle excitation spectrum has dramatic consequences to the compressibility, specific heat, and spin susceptibility at low temperatures, as the critical density
nc is crossed. The change in behavior of these quantities indicates a possible quantum phase transition between a d-wave gapless phase and a d-wave fully gapped phase, as
nc is crossed.
The problem of the evolution from BCS theory with cooperative Cooper pairing to the formation and condensation of composite bosons has attracted considerable attention for the past several decades. It has gained renewed impetus in the mid-eighties with the discovery of the high-Tc superconductors, which have a coherence length comparable to the interparticle spacing. More recently, this subject has spurred a great deal of research activity in connection with experiments involving dilute atomic gases of fermionic atoms. The initial objective of this work will be to use functional integral techniques to analyze the low-temperature BCS-to-BEC evolution of d-wave superconductors within the saddle point (mean field) approximation for a continuum model. Then, the same mathematical formalism will be applied to the problem of the BCS-to-BEC evolution of fully spin-polarized p-wave Fermi gases in two dimensions. We find that a quantum phase transition occurs for both systems as they are driven from the BCS-like regime of weakly interacting fermionic pairs to the opposite BEC-like regime of strongly interacting bosonic molecules. This is in contrast to the smooth crossover predicted and observed in systems that exhibit s-wave pairing symmetry. We calculate several spectroscopic and thermodynamic properties that signal the occurrence of this phase transition, and suggest some possible experimental realizations. Finally, fluctuations about the saddle point solution are included in the calculations, and the effects of such correction are analyzed in the low (T~0) and high (T~Tc) temperature limits. We conclude that, at high temperatures, the bosonic degrees of freedom that arise from two-particle bound states become essential to describe the strong coupling limit,\nas the saddle point approximation alone becomes unreliable.
W e study the evolution from BC S to Bose limit in a two-dimensional d -w ave superconductor at zero temp erature and low density of charge carriers w ithin the mean-Ùeld theory .W e examine single quasipa rticl e prop erties w hen particle density and attraction strength are v aried.F or su£ciently high interaction strength there is a critical density b elow w hich the system has a gap.T he spectral and thermo dynami c prop erties of the system do not evolve smo othly from the BC S-like to the Bose-like regime.
The spectral properties of a mixture of bosons hybridized with fermion pairs are studied in the superconducting state. Such a model exhibits two limiting behaviors. One is reminiscent of a BCS system, provided that the total concentration n of particles is below a certain critical concentration
nc, in which case bosons exist only in thermally excited states. The other limit for n\ensuremath{\geqslant}
nc describes a situation largely controlled by the condensation of the bosons. The variation of the single-boson as well as collective excitations as a function of n and for the entire temperature regime from T=0 K to
Tc will be discussed, both with and without long-range Coulomb interaction between the charge carriers. The method for calculation applied here is based on the dielectric formalism and the use of Ward identities, currently used in the theory of the interacting Bose gas, which allows us to derive the density and current correlation functions consistent with local charge-current conservation laws. In the absence of a Coulomb interaction the behavior of the system is characterized by the existence of a sound-wave-like branch in the Bose single-particle and collective excitation spectrum. In the BCS regime the sound velocity is proportional to the Fermi velocity while in the Bose regime it is proportional to the strength of the boson-fermion hybridization and decreases with the superfluid density as we approach
Tc. In the presence of a long-range Coulomb interaction and in the Bose regime one observes, besides the usual optical plasmon mode at high frequency and corresponding to in-phase density oscillation of the two subsytems, an out-of-phase collective mode in the two particle continuum just above the gap. Moreover, upon approaching
Tc a relatively well-defined quasiparticle feature starts to emerge within the gap and is seen in both the Bose single-particle excitation and the density oscillation spectrum. In the BCS regime, due to the very small number of occupied bosonic states, the low-energy quasiparticle features are absent. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.
The BCS-to-BEC evolution has been recently the focus of studies in superconductors and cold atomic gases. For a
d-wave system, we show that a Lifshitz transition occurs at a critical particle density which separates two topologically distinct phases according to their quasiparticle excitation energies: a BCS-like gapless superconductor in the higher-density limit and a BEC-like fully gapped superconductor in the lower-density limit. This transition is second-order according to Ehrenfest's classification, but it occurs without a change in the symmetry of the order parameter and thus cannot be classified under Landau's scheme. To illustrate the nature of the transition, we compute the compressibility and the superfluid density as functions of particle density.
Physical properties of two-dimensional (2D) superconductors is an active area of long time researches in which many, even principle, questions are still open. One of them is a possibility of a smooth crossover of the system from the standard Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer (BCS) regime of strongly overlapping Cooper pairs to the regime of Bose–Einstein condensation (BEC) of almost non-overlapping local pairs. The adequate to the real process description of this transition which can happen either by changing the doping or temperature would lead to a better understanding of the superconducting properties of materials. Though the crossover is not observed in one of the most important layered systems—namely, cuprate superconductors—we demonstrate that in systems with stronger electron-electron attraction it is possible. In particular, in the d-wave channel at sufficiently high doping the crossover can take place with growth of temperature two times, i.e., as BEC→BCS, and followed by reverse BCS→BEC condensation. The physical mechanisms of such transitions and possibility to detect them experimentally in real systems are discussed.