It is shown that all four superintegrable quantum systems on the Euclidean plane possess the same underlying hidden algebra $sl(3)$. The gauge-rotated Hamiltonians, as well as their integrals of motion, once rewritten in appropriate coordinates, preserve a flag of polynomials. This flag corresponds to highest-weight finite-dimensional representations of the $sl(3)$-algebra, realized by first order differential operators.Comment: 14 pages, AMS LaTe

The notion of group entropy is proposed. It enables the unification and generaliztion of many different definitions of entropy known in the literature, such as those of Boltzmann-Gibbs, Tsallis, Abe, and Kaniadakis. Other entropic functionals are introduced, related to nontrivial correlation laws characterizing universality classes of systems out of equilibrium when the dynamics is weakly chaotic. The associated thermostatistics are discussed. The mathematical structure underlying our construction is that of formal group theory, which provides the general structure of the correlations among particles and dictates the associated entropic functionals. As an example of application, the role of group entropies in information theory is illustrated and generalizations of the Kullback-Leibler divergence are proposed. A new connection between statistical mechanics and zeta functions is established. In particular, Tsallis entropy is related to the classical Riemann zeta function.

We introduce a $2N$-parametric family of maximally superintegrable systems in $N$ dimensions, obtained as a reduction of an anisotropic harmonic oscillator in a $2N$-dimensional configuration space. These systems possess closed bounded orbits and integrals of motion which are polynomial in the momenta. They generalize known examples of superintegrable models in the Euclidean plane.

The requirement that an entropy function be composable is key: it means that the entropy of a compound system can be calculated in terms of the entropy of its independent components. We prove that, under mild regularity assumptions, the only composable generalized entropy in trace form is the Tsallis one-parameter family (which contains Boltzmann–Gibbs as a particular case). This result leads to the use of generalized entropies that are not of trace form, such as Rényi’s entropy, in the study of complex systems. In this direction, we also present a characterization theorem for a large class of composable non-trace-form entropy functions with features akin to those of Rényi’s entropy.

The relation is established between some concepts of quantum mechanics and those of soliton theory. In particular, superintegrable systems in two-dimensional quantum mechanics are shown to be invariant under generalized Lie symmetries and to allow recursion operators.