BCS-BEC Crossover Effects and Pseudogap in Neutron Matter

Abstract

Due to the large neutron–neutron scattering length, dilute neutron matter resembles the unitary Fermi gas, which lies half-way in the crossover from the BCS phase of weakly coupled Cooper pairs to the Bose–Einstein condensate of dimers. We discuss crossover effects in analogy with the T-matrix theory used in the physics of ultracold atoms, which we generalize to the case of a non-separable finite-range interaction. A problem of the standard Nozières–Schmitt-Rink approach and different ways to solve it are discussed. It is shown that in the strong-coupling regime, the spectral function exhibits a pseudo-gap at temperatures above the critical temperature Tc. The effect of the correlated density on the density dependence of Tc is found to be rather weak, but a possibly important effect due to the reduced quasiparticle weight is identified.

Keywords

• neutron matter
• pairing
• critical temperature
• BCS-BEC crossover