Liouvillian solutions for second order linear differential equations with polynomial coefficients (Q2054957)

This paper studies the Liouvillian integrability of second order linear differential equations of the form \[ u'' + P(x) u' + Q(x) u = 0, \tag{1} \] with polynomial coefficients of bounded degree. Consider the equation (1) with polynomial coefficients \(P(x) = \sum_{j=1}^n p_j x^j \in \mathbb{C}[x]_{\leq n}\) and \(Q(x) = \sum_{j=1}^{2n} q_j x^j \in \mathbb{C}[x]_{\leq 2n}\), and the corresponding parameter space \[ \mathbb{P}_{2n} = (\mathbb{C}[x]_{\leq n} \times \mathbb{C}[x]_{\leq 2n}) - \{p_n^2 - q_{2n} = 0\}. \] The purpose of this paper is to describe algebraically the spectral set \(\mathbb{L}_{2n} \subseteq \mathbb{P}_{2n}\) so that the set of equations in the family (1) admits a Liouvillian solution. By means of Kovacic's algorithm and asymptotic iteration method, the authors found a degree independent algebraic description of the spectral set. To this end, the authors introduced a polynomial-hyperexponential function of polynomial degree \(d\) and exponential degree \(k\) of the form \[ u(x) = P_d(x) e^{\int A_k(x) d x}, \] with \(P_d(x)\) and \(A_k(x)\) polynomials of degree \(d\) and \(k\), respectively. The spectral subvariety \(\mathbb{L}_{2n, d}\) is the subset of \(\mathbb{L}_{2n}\) corresponding to equations in the family (1) having a polynomial-hyperexponential solution of polynomial degree \(d\). The main theorem in this study shows that any compact subset of \(\mathbb{P}_{2n}\) intersects only a finite number of algebraic varieties of the family \(\mathbb{L}_{2n, d}\), \(d\in \mathbb{N}\), and \[ \mathbb{L}_{2n} = \bigcup_{d=0}^\infty \mathbb{L}_{2n, d}. \] Hence, \(\mathbb{L}_{2n}\) is a singular analytic submanifold of \(\mathbb{P}_{2n}\) consisting in the enumerable union of pairwise disjoint algebraic varieties of codimension \(\leq n\) in \(\mathbb{P}_{2n}\). As an application, the authors consider the Schrödinger equation \[ \psi'' = (\lambda - U(x))\psi \] with a polynomial potential \(U(x)\). The algebraic description of the spectral set allow the authors to bound the number of eigenvalues for algebraically quasi-solvable potentials in the above Schrödinger equation.