Racah algebra R(n) from coalgebraic structures and chains of R(3) substructures

Abstract

The recent interest in the study of higher-rank polynomial algebras related to n-dimensional classical and quantum superintegrable systems with coalgebra symmetry and their connection with the generalised Racah algebra R(n), a higher-rank generalisation of the rank one Racah algebra R(3), raises the problem of understanding the role played by the n − 2 quadratic subalgebras generated by the left and right Casimir invariants (sometimes referred as universal quadratic substructures) from this new perspective. Such subalgebra structures play a significant role in the algebraic derivation of spectrum of quantum superintegrable systems. In this work, we tackle this problem and show that the above quadratic subalgebra structures can be understood, at a fixed n > 3, as the images of n − 2 injective morphisms of R(3) into R(n). We show that each of the n − 2 quadratic subalgebras is isomorphic to the rank one Racah algebra R(3). As a byproduct, we also obtain an equivalent presentation for the universal quadratic substructures generated by the partial Casimir invariants of the coalgebra. The construction, which relies on explicit (symplectic or differential) realisations of the generators, is performed in both the classical and the quantum cases.