A Brief Excursus to the BCS–BEC Crossover

This chapter provides a concise account of the salient features of the BCS–BEC crossover. After a brief historical review of the topic, the key features of the BCS–BEC crossover are recalled. In particular, the BCS wave function for the ground state is shown to contain the BEC state of composite bosons as a limiting situation, and the special role played in this context by the chemical potential is pointed out. The need for pairing fluctuations beyond mean field is also emphasized, together with the occurrence of two (coupling and temperature dependent) lengths, which measure the correlation either within a pair of fermions with opposite spins or among different pairs. The limiting physical situations corresponding to the Ginzburg–Landau and Gross–Pitaevskii equations are finally considered.