Stability of matter–antimatter molecules Original Research Article

We examine the stability of matter–antimatter molecules by reducing the four-body problem into a simpler two-body problem with residual interactions. We find that matter–antimatter molecules with constituents image possess bound states if their constituent mass ratio m1/m2 is greater than about 4. This stability condition suggests that the binding of matter–antimatter molecules is a rather common phenomenon. We evaluate the binding energies and eigenstates of matter–antimatter molecules image, and (K+μ−) − (μ+K−), which satisfy the stability condition. We estimate the molecular annihilation lifetimes in their s states.