The spectral properties and singularities of monodromy-free Schroedinger operators

The main object of study is the theory of Schrödinger operators with meromorphic potentials, having trivial monodromy in the complex domain. In the first part we study the spectral properties of a class of such operators related to the classical Whittaker-Hill equation (-d^2/dx^2+Acos2x+Bcos4x)ψ=λψ. The equation, for special choices of A and B, is known to have the remarkable property that half of the gaps eventually become closed (semifinite-gap operator). Using the Darboux transformation we construct new trigonometric examples of semifinite-gap operators with real, smooth potentials. A similar technique applied to the Lamé operator gives smooth, real, finite-gap potentials in terms of classical Jacobi elliptic functions. In the second part we study the singular locus of monodromy-free potentials in the complex domain. A particular case is given by the zeros of Wronskians of Hermite polynomials, which are studied in detail. We introduce a class of partitions (doubled partitions) for which we observe a direct qualitative relationship between the pattern of zeros and the shape of the corresponding Young diagram. For the Wronskians W(H_n,H_{n+k}) we give an asymptotic formula for the curve on which zeros lie as n → ∞. We also give some empirical formulas for asymptotic behaviour of zeros of Wronskians of 3 and 4 Hermite polynomials. In the last chapter we apply the theory of monodromy-free operators to produce new vortex equilibria in the periodic case and in the presence of background flow.