Superconductivity in a two-dimensional Fermi gas: Evolution from Cooper pairing to Bose condensation

Abstract

We study a two-dimensional continuum model of a dilute gas of fermions at T=0 interacting via a given two-body potential, with an aim to investigate superconductors with coherence length of the order of the interparticle spacing [$k_F$ ${\xi }_0$∼O(1)], a striking feature of the high-$T_c$ materials. We find that a two-body bound state in vacuum is a necessary and sufficient condition for an s-wave pairing instability. We also find that the existence of such a bound state in a higher-angular-momentum (l>0) channel is not a necessary condition for an l-wave pairing instability. We further investigate using a variational ansatz the evolution from a state with large overlapping Cooper pairs ($k_F$ ${\xi }_0$≫1) to one with Bose condensation of composite bosons ($k_F$ ${\xi }_0$≪1). For the s-wave case an exact solution of the variational equations shows a smooth crossover from one regime to the other at T=0. The p-wave solution has a weak singularity when the chemical potential goes through zero, which is the bottom of the band. We show, quite generally, independent of the dimensionality and of model details, that the gap–to–single-particle excitations is nodeless, even if the anisotropic pair wave function has nodes, when the coupling is strong enough that the chemical potential is negative.