Quantum superintegrable Zernike system

We consider the differential equation that Zernike proposed to classify aberrations of wavefronts in a circular pupil, whose value at the boundary can be nonzero. On this account, the quantum Zernike system, where that differential equation is seen as a Schrodinger equation with a potential, is special in that it has a potential and a boundary condition that are not standard in quantum mechanics. We project the disk on a half-sphere and there we find that, in addition to polar coordinates, this system separates into two additional coordinate systems (non-orthogonal on the pupil disk), which lead to Schrodinger-type equations with Poschl-Teller potentials, whose eigen-solutions involve Legendre, Gegenbauer, and Jacobi polynomials. This provides new expressions for separated polynomial solutions of the original Zernike system that are real. The operators which provide the separation constants are found to participate in a superintegrable cubic Higgs algebra.