The anisotropic oscillator on curved spaces: A new exactly solvable model

Abstract

We present a new exactly solvable (classical and quantum) model that can be interpreted as the generalization to the two-dimensional sphere and to the hyperbolic space of the two-dimensional anisotropic oscillator with any pair of frequencies $\omega_x$ and $\omega_y$. The new curved Hamiltonian ${H}_\kappa$ depends on the curvature $\kappa$ of the underlying space as a deformation/contraction parameter, and the Liouville integrability of ${H}_\kappa$ relies on its separability in terms of geodesic parallel coordinates, which generalize the Cartesian coordinates of the plane. Moreover, the system is shown to be superintegrable for commensurate frequencies $\omega_x: \omega_y$, thus mimicking the behaviour of the flat Euclidean case, which is always recovered in the $\kappa\to 0$ limit. The additional constant of motion in the commensurate case is, as expected, of higher-order in the momenta and can be explicitly deduced by performing the classical factorization of the Hamiltonian. The known $1:1$ and $2:1$ anisotropic curved oscillators are recovered as particular cases of ${H}_\kappa$, meanwhile all the remaining $\omega_x: \omega_y$ curved oscillators define new superintegrable systems. Furthermore, the quantum Hamiltonian $\hat {H}_\kappa$ is fully constructed and studied by following a quantum factorization approach. In the case of commensurate frequencies, the Hamiltonian $\hat {H}_\kappa$ turns out to be quantum superintegrable and leads to a new exactly solvable quantum model. Its corresponding spectrum, that exhibits a maximal degeneracy, is explicitly given as an analytical deformation of the Euclidean eigenvalues in terms of both the curvature $\kappa$ and the Planck constant $\hbar$. In fact, such spectrum is obtained as a composition of two one-dimensional (either trigonometric or hyperbolic) P\"osch-Teller set of eigenvalues.