Although our discussion in this section will be largely phenomenological we must anticipate the major result of the microscopic theory which will be developed in Parts II and III; in particular we must make use of the fact that superfluidity in Fermi systems arises from the formation of a special kind of bound state in which electrons (or He quasiparticles) on (or near) the Fermi surface having oppositely directed momenta, + p and – p, form (collectively) bound pairs.

For the vast majority of superfluid electron systems (metals), the pairs form in a state with no net orbital angular momentum, an l = 0 or s-wave state which we will refer to as conventional fermion superfluidity; by the Pauli principle the electrons must then be in a singlet spin state (s = 0).

In the decade or so following the development of the BCS theory, and especially after the experimental discovery of the superfluid phases of liquid He, theorists explored various types of pairing in systems with a more complicated orbital and spin structure in which the gap can vary, in both magnitude and phase, with position on the Fermi surface. In the case of odd l pairing, the pairs form (again due to the Pauli principle) in a triplet s = 1 rather than a singlet spin state. The energy gap associated with such states may have zeros (i.e., vanish) at points or lines on the Fermi surface, and as a result the number of excitations at low temperatures varies as a power of the temperature, rather than exponentially.