Toward a classification of semidegenerate 3D superintegrable systems

TL;DR

This paper classifies a specific class of 3D superintegrable systems with 3-parameter potentials, using Bôcher contractions of the conformal Lie algebra to generate and relate systems with higher-order extensions.

Contribution

It introduces a contraction scheme based on Bôcher contractions to systematically generate and relate 3-parameter superintegrable systems with 4th order extensions.

Findings

Generated a large family of 3-parameter systems with 4th order extensions

Established a contraction scheme relating different superintegrable systems

Provided tools for explicit solutions of quantum and classical systems

Abstract

Superintegrable systems of 2nd order in 3 dimensions with exactly 3-parameter potentials are intriguing objects. Next to the nondegenerate 4-parameter potential systems they admit the maximum number of symmetry operators but their symmetry algebras don't close under commutation and not enough is known about their structure to give a complete classification. Some examples are known for which the 3-parameter system can be extended to a 4th order superintegrable system with a 4-parameter potential and 6 linearly independent symmetry generators. In this paper we use B\^ocher contractions of the conformal Lie algebra $so(5,C)$ to itself to generate a large family of 3-parameter systems with 4th order extensions, on a variety of manifolds, and all from B\^ocher contractions of a single "generic" system on the 3-sphere. We give a contraction scheme relating these systems. The results have myriad applications for finding explicit solutions for both quantum and classical systems.