Maximal superintegrability of the generalized Kepler–Coulomb system on N-dimensional curved spaces

Abstract

The superposition of the Kepler–Coulomb potential on the 3D Euclidean space with three centrifugal terms has recently been shown to be maximally superintegrable (Verrier and Evans 2008 J. Math. Phys. 49 022902) by finding an additional (hidden) integral of motion which is quartic in the momenta. In this paper, we present the generalization of this result to the N-dimensional spherical, hyperbolic and Euclidean spaces by making use of a unified symmetry approach that makes use of the curvature parameter. The resulting Hamiltonian, formed by the (curved) Kepler–Coulomb potential together with N centrifugal terms, is shown to be endowed with 2N − 1 functionally independent integrals of the motion: one of them is quartic and the remaining ones are quadratic. The transition from the proper Kepler–Coulomb potential, with its associated quadratic Laplace–Runge–Lenz N-vector, to the generalized system is fully described. The role of spherical, nonlinear (cubic) and coalgebra symmetries in all these systems is highlighted.