We investigate the asymptotic zero distribution of Heine-Stieltjes polynomials -polynomial solutions of a second order differential equations with complex polynomial coefficients. In the case when all zeros of the leading coefficients are all real, zeros of the Heine-Stieltjes polynomials were interpreted by Stieltjes as discrete distributions minimizing an energy functional. In a general complex situation one deals instead with a critical point of the energy. We introduce the notion of discrete and continuous critical measures (saddle points of the weighted logarithmic energy on the plane), and prove that a weak-* limit of a sequence of discrete critical measures is a continuous critical measure. Thus, the limit zero distributions of the Heine-Stieltjes polynomials are given by continuous critical measures. We give a detailed description of such measures, showing their connections with quadratic differentials. In doing that, we obtain some results on the global structure of rational quadratic differentials on the Riemann sphere that have an independent interest.The problem has a rich variety of connections with other fields of analysis, some of them are briefly mentioned in the paper.

ABSTRACT:The analytic information theory of quantum systems includes the exact determination of their spatial extension or multidimensional spreading in both position and momentum spaces by means of the familiar variance and its generalization, the power and logarithmic moments, and, more appropriately, the Shannon entropy and the Fisher information. These complementary uncertainty measures have a global or local character, respectively, because they are power-like (variance, moments), logarithmic (Shannon) and gradient (Fisher) functionals of the corresponding probability distribution. Here we explicitly discuss all these spreading measures (and their associated uncertainty relations) in both position and momentum for the main prototype in D-dimensional physics, the hydrogenic system, directly in terms of the dimensionality and the hyperquantum numbers which characterize the involved states. Then, we analyze in detail such measures for s-states, circular states (i.e., single-electron states of highest angular momenta allowed within an electronic manifold characterized by a given principal hyperquantum number), and Rydberg states (i.e., states with large radial hyperquantum numbers n).

This is a survey of results constituting the foundations of the modern convergence theory of Padé approximants. Bibliography: 204 titles.