Point Vortices and Classical Orthogonal Polynomials

Stationary equilibria of point vortices in the plane and on the cylinder in the presence of a background flow are studied. Vortex systems with an arbitrary choice of circulations are considered. Differential equations satisfied by generating polynomials of vortex configurations are derived. It is shown that these equations can be reduced to a single one. It is found that polynomials that are Wronskians of classical orthogonal polynomials solve the latter equation. As a consequence vortex equilibria at a certain choice of background flows can be described with the help of Wronskians of classical orthogonal polynomials.