We investigate the BCS-BEC crossover taking into account an additional three-body interaction, which is essentially the scattering between the Cooper pairs and the newly formed bosons. We show that if the two-body interaction is attractive, the presence of this additional three-body term makes the crossover process a nonreversible one. Starting from a stable Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) state, crossover to BCS can be achieved; but if the BCS state is the starting point, instead of a stable BEC region, what the system crosses over to is a metastable condensed state.
Categories: cond-mat.quant-gas cond-mat.supr-con