Linear response of a superfluid Fermi gas inside its pair-breaking continuum

We study the signatures of the collective modes of a superfluid Fermi gas in its linear response functions for the order-parameter and density fluctuations in the Random Phase Approximation (RPA). We show that a resonance associated to the Popov-Andrianov (or sometimes “Higgs”) mode is visible inside the pair-breaking continuum at all values of the wavevector q, not only in the (order-parameter) modulus-modulus response function but also in the modulus-density and density-density responses. At nonzero temperature, the resonance survives in the presence of thermally broken pairs even until the vicinity of the critical temperature T(c), and coexists with both the Anderson-Bogoliubov modes at temperatures comparable to the gap Δ and with the low-velocity phononic mode predicted by RPA near T(c). The existence of a Popov-Andrianov-“Higgs” resonance is thus a robust, generic feature of the high-energy phenomenology of pair-condensed Fermi gases, and should be accessible to state-of-the-art cold atom experiments.