Pair condensation in the BCS-BEC crossover of ultracold atoms loaded onto a 2D square lattice

Abstract

We investigate the crossover from the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) state of weakly-bound Cooper pairs to the Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC) of strongly-bound molecular dimers in a gas of ultracold atoms loaded on a two-dimensional optical lattice. By using the the mean-field BCS equations of the emerging Hubbard model and the concept of off-diagonal-long-range-order for fermions we calculate analytically and numerically the pair binding energy, the energy gap and the condensate fraction of Cooper pairs as a function of interaction strength and filling fractor of atoms in the lattice at zero temperature.