Structure of the superfluid ground state of an atomic Fermi gas near the Feshbach resonance

The ground state of an atomic Fermi gas near the Feshbach resonance for a negative scattering length is investigated using the variational method. The structure of the superfluid state is formed by two coherently coupled subsystems, viz., the quasimolecular subsystem in a closed channel and the subsystem of atomic pairs in an open channel. The derived system of equations makes it possible to describe the properties of the ground state for arbitrary values of the parameters (in particular, to find the gap in the single-particle Fermi excitation spectrum and the speed of sound characterizing the branch of collective Bose excitations).