Effective action for superconductors and BCS-Bose crossover

A standard perturbative expansion around the mean-held solution is used to derive the low-energy effective action for superconductors at T=0. Taking i nto account the density fluctuations at the outset we get the effective act ion where the density rho is the conjugated momentum to the phase a of the order parameter. In the hydrodynamic regime, the dynamics of the supercondu ctor is described by a time-dependent nonlinear Schrodinger (TDNLS) equatio n for the field Psi(x) = root rho/2e(l theta). The evolution of the density fluctuations in the crossover from weak-coupling (BCS) to strong-coupling (Bose condensation of localized pairs) superconductivity is discussed for t he attractive Hubbard model. In the bosonic limit, the TDNLS equation reduc es to the Gross-Pitaevskii equation for the order parameter, as in the stan dard description of superfluidity. The conditions under which a phase-only action can be derived in the presence of a long-range interaction to descri be the physics of the superconductivity of ''bad metals'' are discussed. [S 0163-1829(99)14921-X].