  The BCS-to-BEC crossover, as well as the nature of Cooper pairs, in a
superconducting and Fermi superfluid medium is studied from the exact ground
state wavefunction of the reduced BCS Hamiltonian. As the strength of the
interaction increases, the ground state continuously evolves from a
mixed-system of quasifree fermions and pair resonances (BCS), to pair
resonances and quasibound molecules (pseudogap), and finally to a system of
quasibound molecules (BEC). A single unified scenario arises where the
Cooper-pair wavefunction has a unique functional form. Several exact analytic
expressions, such as the binding energy and condensate fraction, are derived.
We compare our results with recent experiments in ultracold atomic Fermi gases.
