Goursat rigid local systems of rank four (Q2319808)

The authors study the general properties of certain rank \(4\) rigid local systems, namely Goursat's G-II case. These are systems free of accessory parameters, i.e. whose global monodromy is uniquely defined by the local monodromy data. Irreducibility of such systems is analyzed and an explicit integral description as well as the invariant Hermitian form when it exists are given. By a computer search, the authors find what is expected to be all irreducible such systems all whose solutions are algebraic functions, and they give several explicit examples defined over \(\mathbb{Q}\). They present an example with infinite monodromy as arising from a family of genus two curves.