Accidental Degeneracy of an Elliptic Differential Operator: A Clarification in Terms of Ladder Operators

We consider the linear, second-order elliptic, Schrödinger-type differential operator L:=−12∇2+r22. Because of its rotational invariance, that is it does not change under SO(3) transformations, the eigenvalue problem −12∇2+r22f(x,y,z)=λf(x,y,z) can be studied more conveniently in spherical polar coordinates. It is already known that the eigenfunctions of the problem depend on three parameters. The so-called accidental degeneracy of L occurs when the eigenvalues of the problem depend on one of such parameters only. We exploited ladder operators to reformulate accidental degeneracy, so as to provide a new way to describe degeneracy in elliptic PDE problems.