Stability of Trapped Ultracold Fermi Gases Using Effective s- and p-Wave Contact-Interactions

The stability of trapped dilute Fermi gases against collapse towards large densities is studied. A hermitian effective contact-interaction for all partial waves is derived, which is particularly suited for a mean-field description of these systems. Including the s- and p-wave parts explicit stability conditions and critical particle numbers are given as function of the scattering lengths. The p-wave contribution determines the stability of a single-component gas and can substantially modify the stability of a two-component gas. Moreover it may give rise to a novel p-wave stabilized high-density phase.