The self-consistent random-phase approximation (SCRPA) is extended to nonzero temperature. Within the SCRPA, the collective dynamics of nucleon pairs is built on the occupation numbers that deviate from the Fermi-Dirac distribution as a result of temperature-dependent correlations beyond the RPA. The equations for single-particle occupation numbers are derived using the method of the double-time Green's functions. The approach is applied to the Richardson model of pairing. The results of numerical calculations for energies of states and occupation numbers, as well as for the thermodynamic quantities such as the excitation energy and heat capacity of the system, are compared with those obtained within the conventional RPA and the perturbative thermal SCRPA and with the exact results. We find that, overall, the SCRPA offers a better agreement with the exact results.
We consider a spin-imbalanced Fermi gas at zero temperature in the normal phase on the BCS side of the BCS-BEC crossover and around unitarity. We compute the critical polarization for pairing, the correlated occupation numbers, and the contact in an extension of particle-particle random-phase approximation (RPA) (also called non-self-consistent
T-matrix approach or ladder approximation). The so-called renormalized RPA consists in computing the
T matrix with self-consistently determined occupation numbers. The occupation numbers are determined either by keeping the self-energy only to first order or by resumming the Dyson equation. In this way, the result for the critical polarization, strongly overestimated in standard RPA, is clearly improved. We also discuss some problems of this approach.