Symmetries of the hydrogen atom and algebraic families

Abstract

We show how the Schrödinger equation for the hydrogen atom in two dimensions gives rise to an algebraic family of Harish-Chandra pairs that codifies hidden symmetries. The hidden symmetries vary continuously between $SO(3)$, $SO(2,1)$ and the Euclidean group $O(2)\ltimes \mathbb{R}^2$. We show that solutions of the Schrödinger equation may be organized into an algebraic family of Harish-Chandra modules. Furthermore, we use Jantzen filtration techniques to algebraically recover the spectrum of the Schrödinger operator. This is a first application to physics of the algebraic families of Harish-Chandra pairs and modules developed in the work of Bernstein et al. [Int. Math. Res. Notices, rny147 (2018); rny146 (2018)].

Many typos were fixed. A section describing the physical solution spaces was added. A conjecture relating the spectral theory of the Schrödinger operator and algebraic families was added