Schrödinger Potentials with Polynomial Solutions of Heun-Type Equations

The present review discusses the solution of the Heun, confluent, biconfluent, double confluent, and triconfluent equations in terms of polynomial expansions, and applies the results to generate exactly solvable Schrödinger potentials. Although there are more general approaches to solve these differential equations in terms of the expansions of certain special functions, the importance of polynomial solutions is unquestionable, as most of the known potentials are solvable in terms of the hypergeometric and confluent hypergeometric functions; i.e., Natanzon-class potentials possess bound-state solutions in terms of classical orthogonal polynomials, to which the (confluent) hypergeometric functions can be reduced. Since some of the Heun-type equations contain the hypergeometric and/or confluent hypergeometric differential equations as special limits, the potentials generated from them may also contain Natanzon-class potentials as special cases. A power series expansion is assumed around one of the singular points of each differential equation, and recurrence relations are obtained for the expansion coefficients. With the exception of the triconfluent Heun equations, these are three-term recurrence relations, the termination of which is achieved by prescribing certain conditions. In the case of the biconfluent and double confluent Heun equations, the expansion coefficients can be obtained in the standard way, i.e., after finding the roots of an ( N + 1)th-order polynomial in one of the parameters, which, in turn, follows from requiring the vanishing of an ( N + 1) × ( N + 1) determinant. However, in the case of the Heun and confluent Heun equations, the recurrence relation can be solved directly, and the solutions are obtained in terms of rationally extended X 1 -type Jacobi and Laguerre polynomials, respectively. Examples for solvable potentials are presented for the Heun, confluent, biconfluent, and double confluent Heun equations, and alternative methods for obtaining the same potentials are also discussed. These are the schemes based on the rational extension of Bochner-type differential equations (for the Heun and confluent Heun equation) and solutions based on quasi-exact solvability (QES) and on continued fractions (for the biconfluent and double confluent equation). Possible further lines of investigations are also outlined concerning physical problems that require the solution of second-order differential equations, i.e., the Schrödinger equation with position-dependent mass and relativistic wave equations.