Stability of the (2+2)-fermionic system with zero-range interaction

We introduce a 3D model, and we study its stability, consisting of two distinct pairs of identical fermions coupled with a two-body interaction between fermions of different species, whose effective range is essentially zero (a so called (2+2)-fermionic system with zero-range interaction). The interaction is modelled by implementing the celebrated (and ubiquitous in the literature of this field) Bethe-Peierls contact condition with given two-body scattering length within the Krein-Višik-Birman theory of extensions of semi-bounded symmetric operators, in order to make the Hamiltonian a well-defined (self-adjoint) physical observable. After deriving the expression for the associated energy quadratic form, we show analytically and numerically that the energy of the model is bounded below, thus describing a stable system. © 2016 IOP Publishing Ltd.