Manifestations of the pseudogap in the boson-fermion model for Bose-Einstein-condensation-driven superconductivity

In the boson-fermion model for short-coherence-length superconductors, a pseudogap opens up in the density of states of the fermions as the temperature is lowered towards the superconducting transition temperature. For a two-dimensional square lattice we study here the effects of this phenomenon on the specific heat, the NMR relaxation rate, and the optical conductivity within a fully self-consistent lowest-order diagrammatic theory and compare our results to the experimental situation.