Fourth order superintegrable systems separating in Cartesian coordinates I. Exotic quantum potentials

Abstract

A study is presented of two-dimensional superintegrable systems separating in Cartesian coordinates and allowing an integral of motion that is a fourth order polynomial in the momenta. All quantum mechanical potentials that do not satisfy any linear differential equation are found. They do however satisfy nonlinear ODEs. We show that these equations always have the Painlevé property and integrate them in terms of known Painlevé transcendents or elliptic functions.