Harmonic functions vanishing on a cone (Q2414517)

Let \(Z=\{(x,y,z)\in B:x^{2}+y^{2}-2z^{2}=0\}\), where \(B\) is the unit ball of \(\mathbb{R}^{3}\), and let \(\mathcal{H}(Z)\) denote the space of harmonic functions on \(B\) which vanish on \(Z\). The starting point of this paper is the conjecture that \(\mathcal{H}(Z)\) is finite dimensional. This is reformulated as the conjecture that the number of pairs \((l,m)\) such that \(P_{2}|P_{l}^{m}\) is finite, where \(P_{l}^{m}\) denotes the usual associated Legendre function and \(P_{l}=P_{l}^{0}\) is a Legendre polynomial. If \(m\) is odd, then the assertion \(P_{2}|P_{l}^{m}\) means that \(P_{2}\) divides the polynomial \(P_{l}^{m}(x)/\sqrt{1-x^{2}}\).\ In the case where \(m=0\) it is known that \(P_{2}|P_{l}\) if and only if \(l=2\). The authors give evidence in support of their conjecture by showing further that (i) \(P_{2}|P_{l}^{2}\) if and only if \(l=5\); (ii) if \(m\) is even, then there is at most one natural number \(l\) such that \(P_{2}|P_{l}^{m}\); (iii) if \(m\) is odd, then \(P_{2}\nmid P_{l}^{m}\) for all \(l\in \mathbb{N}\).