Invariant subspaces of biconfluent Heun operators and special solutions of Painlev\'e IV

Abstract

We show that there is a full correspondence between the parameters space of the degenerate biconfluent Heun connection (BHC) and that of Painlev\'{e} IV that admits special solutions. The BHC degenerates when either the Stokes' data for the irregular singularity at $\infty$ degenerates or the regular singular point at the origin becomes an apparent singularity. We show that if the BHC is written as isomonodromy family of biconfluent Heun equations (BHE), then the BHE degenerates precisely when it admits eigen-solutions of the biconfluent Heun operators, after choosing appropriate accessory parameter, of specially constructed invariant subspaces of finite dimensional solution spaces spanned by parabolic cylinder functions. We have found all eigen-solutions over this parameter space apart from three exceptional cases after choosing the right accessory parameters. These eigen-solutions are expressed as certain finite sum of parabolic cylinder functions. We extend the above sum to new convergent series expansion in terms of parabolic cylinder functions to the BHE. The infinite sum solutions of the BHE terminates precisely when the parameters of the BHE assumes the same values as those of the degenerate biconfluent Heun connection except at three instances after choosing the right accessory parameter.