Universal correlations along the BEC-BCS crossover

Abstract

Universality of the long-distance behavior across the Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer (BEC)-Bose–Einstein condensate (BCS) smooth transition for two-body density correlation functions and the Cooper-pair probability density is demonstrated in a balanced mixture of a two-component Fermi gas at T = 0. It is numerically shown at the mean-field level that these two-body quantities exhibit an exponential decay in terms of the chemical potential and the low-energy behavior of the gap. A general expression is found for the two-body distributions holding for different features of finite-range potentials, such as divergences at the origin, discontinuities at a finite radius, power-law decay, and exponential decay. The correlation length characterizing the long-distance behavior unravels the dependence on the energy needed to break pairs along the BEC-BCS crossover, a quantity meaningful to the stability of the many-body state.

Keywords

• BEC-BCS crossover
• correlation functions
• superfluids
• ultracold quantum matter