Superintegrable systems on spaces of constant curvature

Cezary Gonera, Magdalena Kaszubska

Published 2013-11-04, updated 2013-11-20Version 2

Construction and classification of 2D superintegrable systems (i.e. systems admitting, in addition to two global integrals of motion guaranteeing the Liouville integrability, the third global and independent one) defined on 2D spaces of constant curvature and separable in the so called geodesic polar coordinates are presented. The method proposed is applicable to any value of curvature including the case of Euclidean plane, the 2-sphere and the hyperbolic plane. The mathematic used is essentially "physical", in particular it refers to the very elegant technique of action-angle variables and perturbation theory so most of our mathematical formulas have a clear physical meaning. The main result can be considered as a kind of generalization of the Bertrand's theorem on 2D spaces of constant curvature and it covers most of known separable and superintegrable models on such spaces (in particular, the so-called Tremblay-Turbiner-Winternitz (TTW) and Post-Winternitz (PW) models which have recently attracted some interest).