Cooper pairing reexamined

When both two-electron \textit{and} two-hole Cooper-pairing are treated on an equal footing in the ladder approximation to the Bethe-Salpeter (BS) equation, the zero-total-momentum Cooper-pair energy is found to have two \textit{real} solutions \mathcal{E}_{0}^{BS}=\pm 2\hbar \omega_{{D}%}/\sqrt{{e}^{2/\lambda }+{1}} which coincide with the zero-temperature BCS energy gap $\Delta =\hbar \omega_{D}/\sinh (1/\lambda)$ in the weak coupling limit. Here, $\hbar \omega_{D}$ is the Debye energy and $\lambda \geq 0$ the BCS model interaction coupling parameter. The interpretation of the BCS energy gap as the binding energy of a Cooper-pair is often claimed in the literature but, to our knowledge, never substantiated even in weak-coupling as we find here. In addition, we confirm the two purely-\textit{imaginary} solutions assumed since at least the late 1950s as the \textit{only} solutions, namely, $\mathcal{E}_{0}^{BS}=\pm i2\hbar \omega_{{D}}/\sqrt{{e}^{2/\lambda}{-1}}.$