Bogoliubov excitations of trapped superfluid Fermi gases in a BCS-BEC crossover beyond the Thomas-Fermi limit

We study the Bogoliubov collective excitations of harmonically trapped superfluid Fermi gases in the crossover from Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) superfluid to Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) beyond Thomas-Fermi (TF) limit. Starting from a generalized Gross-Pitaevskii equation and an equation of state valid for the whole crossover, we derive Bogoliubov–de Gennes (BdG) equations for low-lying collective modes at zero temperature. We use a Fetter-like variational ground state wave function to remove the noncontinuity of slope at the boundary of condensate, which appears in the TF limit. We solve the BdG equations analytically and obtain explicit expressions for all eigenvalues and eigenfunctions, valid for various crossover regimes and for traps with spherical and axial symmetries. We discuss the feature of these collective excitations in the BCS-BEC crossover and show that the theoretical result obtained agrees with available experimental data near and beyond the TF limit.