Examples of Heun and Mathieu functions as solutions of wave equations in curved spaces

Abstract

We give examples of where the Heun function exists as solutions of wave equations encountered in general relativity. While the Dirac equation written in the background of Nutku helicoid metric yields Mathieu functions as its solutions in four spacetime dimensions, the trivial generalization to five dimensions results in the double confluent Heun function. We reduce this solution to the Mathieu function with some transformations. We must apply Atiyah-Patodi-Singer spectral boundary conditions to this system since the metric has a singularity at the origin.