Monodromy in Prolate Spheroidal Harmonics

Abstract: We show that spheroidal wave functions viewed as the essential part of the joint eigenfunction of two commuting operators of $L_2(S^2)$ has a defect in the joint spectrum that makes a global labelling of the joint eigenfunctions by quantum numbers impossible. To our knowledge this is the first explicit demonstration that quantum monodromy exists in a class of classically known special functions. Using an analogue of the Laplace-Runge-Lenz vector we show that the corresponding classical Liouville integrable system is symplectically equivalent to the C. Neumann system. To prove the existence of this defect we construct a classical integrable system that is the semi-classical limit of the quantum integrable system of commuting operators. We show that this is a semi-toric system with a non-degenerate focus-focus point, such that there is monodromy in the classical and the quantum system.