Let be a finite or infinite open interval in . A system (or set) of polynomials , , where has degree as in §18.1(i), is said to be orthogonal on with respect to the weight function () if
18.2.1 | |||
. | |||
Here is continuous or piecewise continuous or integrable such that
18.2.1_5 | |||
. | |||
It is assumed throughout this chapter that for each polynomial that is orthogonal on an open interval the variable is confined to the closure of unless indicated otherwise. (However, under appropriate conditions almost all equations given in the chapter can be continued analytically to various complex values of the variables.)
Let be a finite set of distinct points on , or a countable infinite set of distinct points on , and , , be a set of positive constants. Then a system of polynomials , , is said to be orthogonal on with respect to the weights if
18.2.2 | |||
, | |||
when is infinite, or
18.2.3 | |||
, | |||
when is a finite set of distinct points. In the former case we also require
18.2.4 | |||
, | |||
whereas in the latter case the system is finite: .
More generally than (18.2.1)–(18.2.3), may be replaced in (18.2.1) by , where the measure is the Lebesgue–Stieltjes measure corresponding to a bounded nondecreasing function on the closure of with an infinite number of points of increase, and such that for all . See §1.4(v), McDonald and Weiss (1999, Chapters 3, 4) and Szegő (1975, §1.4). Then
18.2.4_5 | |||
. | |||
The orthogonality relations (18.2.1)–(18.2.3) each determine the polynomials uniquely up to constant factors, which may be fixed by suitable standardizations.
Throughout this chapter we will use constants and , and variants of these, related to OP’s .
The constants , , and are defined as:
18.2.6 | ||||
and
18.2.7 | |||
where and for .
The classical orthogonal polynomials are defined with:
(i) the traditional OP standardizations of Table 18.3.1, where each is defined in terms of the above constants.
Two, more specialized, standardizations are:
(ii) monic OP’s: .
(iii) orthonormal OP’s: (and usually, but not always, );
As in §18.1(i) we assume that .
18.2.8 | |||
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Here , (), and () are real constants. Then
18.2.9 | ||||
Hence (), so
18.2.9_5 | |||
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The OP’s are orthonormal iff () and . The OP’s are monic iff () and .
18.2.10 | |||
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Here , (), () are real constants. Then
18.2.11 | ||||
Hence
18.2.11_1 | |||
Furthermore, (), so
18.2.11_2 | |||
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The OP’s are orthonormal iff () and . The OP’s are monic iff () and .
The coefficients in the first form and in the second form are related by
18.2.11_3 | ||||
Assume that the are monic, so . Then, with
18.2.11_4 | ||||
the monic recurrence relations (18.2.8) and (18.2.10) take the form
18.2.11_5 | ||||
, | ||||
See also (3.5.30). Note that
18.2.11_6 | |||
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In terms of the monic OP’s define the orthonormal OP’s by
18.2.11_7 | |||
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Then, with the coefficients (18.2.11_4) associated with the monic OP’s , the orthonormal recurrence relation for takes the form
18.2.11_8 | ||||
with still being associated with the monic .
If polynomials are generated by recurrence relation (18.2.8) under assumption of inequality (18.2.9_5) (or similarly for the other three forms) then the are orthogonal by Favard’s theorem, see §18.2(viii), in that the existence of a bounded non-decreasing function on yielding the orthogonality realtion (18.2.4_5) is guaranteed.
If the polynomials () are orthogonal on a finite set of distinct points as in (18.2.3), then the polynomial of degree , up to a constant factor defined by (18.2.8) or (18.2.10), vanishes on .
The recurrence relations (18.2.10) can be equivalently written as
18.2.11_9 | |||
The matrix on the left-hand side is an (infinite tridiagonal) Jacobi matrix. This matrix is symmetric iff ().
18.2.12_5 | |||
18.2.13 | |||
Assume in (18.2.12). Then the kernel polynomials
18.2.14 | |||
are OP’s with orthogonality relation
18.2.15 | |||
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Between the systems and there are the contiguous relations
18.2.16 | ||||
18.2.17 | ||||
All zeros of an OP are simple, and they are located in the interval of orthogonality . The zeros of and separate each other, and if then between any two zeros of there is at least one zero of .
For usage of the zeros of an OP in Gauss quadrature see §3.5(v). When the Jacobi matrix in (18.2.11_9) is truncated to an matrix
18.2.18 | |||
then the zeros of are the eigenvalues of (see also §3.5(vi)).
Let be the zeros of the OP , so
18.2.19 | |||
The discriminant of is defined by
18.2.20 | |||
See Ismail (2009, §3.4) for another expression of the discriminant in the case of a general OP.
For OP’s on with respect to an even weight function we have
18.2.21 | |||
so we can put
18.2.22 | ||||
Then are OP’s on with respect to weight function and are OP’s on with respect to weight function .
As a slight variant let be OP’s with respect to an even weight function on . Then (18.2.21) still holds and we can put
18.2.23 | ||||
Then are OP’s on with respect to weight function and are OP’s on with respect to weight function .
See Chihara (1978, Ch. I, §8).
If a system of polynomials satisfies any of the formula pairs (recurrence relation and coefficient inequality) (18.2.8), (18.2.9_5) or (18.2.10), (18.2.11_2) or (18.2.11_5), (18.2.11_6) or (18.2.11_8), (18.2.11_6) then is orthogonal with respect to some positive measure on (Favard’s theorem). The measure is not necessarily absolutely continuous (i.e., of the form ) nor is it necessarily unique, up to a positive constant factor. However, if OP’s have an orthogonality relation on a bounded interval, then their orthogonality measure is unique, up to a positive constant factor.
A system of OP’s satisfying (18.2.1) and (18.2.5) is complete if each in the Hilbert space can be approximated in Hilbert norm by finite sums . For such a system, functions and sequences () satisfying can be related to each other in a similar way as was done for Fourier series in (1.8.1) and (1.8.2):
18.2.24 | |||
if and only if
18.2.25 | |||
(convergence in ). A system of OP’s with unique orthogonality measure is always complete, see Shohat and Tamarkin (1970, Theorem 2.14). In particular, a system of OP’s on a bounded interval is always complete.
The moments for an orthogonality measure are the numbers
18.2.26 | |||
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The Hankel determinant of order is defined by and
18.2.27 | |||
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Also define determinants by , and
18.2.28 | |||
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The monic OP’s with respect to the measure can be expressed in terms of the moments by
18.2.29 | |||
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The recurrence coefficients and in (18.2.11_5) can be expressed in terms of the determinants (18.2.27) and (18.2.28) by
18.2.30 | ||||
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. | ||||
It is to be noted that, although formally correct, the results of (18.2.30) are of little utility for numerical work, as Hankel determinants are notoriously ill-conditioned. See Gautschi (2004, p. 54), and Golub and Meurant (2010, pp. 56, 57). Alternatives for numerical calculation of the recursion coefficients in terms of the moments are discussed in these references, and in §18.40(ii).
In this subsection fix the recurrence coefficients () and () as in (18.2.11_5), with the corresponding monic OP’s and with , and as in the orthogonality relation (18.2.4_5). Define the first associated monic orthogonal polynomials as monic OP’s satisfying
18.2.31 | ||||
, | ||||
where the first indicates that the indices of the recursion coefficients , of (18.2.31) have been incremented by , when compared to those of (18.2.11_5). More generally, §18.30 defines the recurrence relation of the th associated monic OP by means of a similar shift by in (18.2.11_5).
The OP’s may also be calculated from the original recursion (18.2.11_5), but with independent initial conditions for :
18.2.32 | ||||
, | ||||
resulting in , by simple comparison of the two recursions. The are the monic corecursive orthogonal polynomials. These relationships are further explored in §§18.30(vi) and 18.30(vii).
The polynomials may be also be directly expressed in terms of the of (18.2.11_5):
18.2.33 | |||
, , | |||
with moment defined in (18.2.26).
Using the terminology of §1.12(ii), the -th approximant of the continued fraction
18.2.34 | |||
is given by
18.2.35 | |||
Then
18.2.36 | |||
where are the zeros of and
18.2.37 | |||
, | |||
are the Christoffel numbers, see also (3.5.18). Because of (18.2.36) the OP’s are also called monic denominator polynomials and the OP’s , or, equivalently, the , are called the monic numerator polynomials.
Assume that the interval is bounded. Markov’s theorem states that
18.2.38 | |||
. | |||
See Chihara (1978, pp. 86–89), and, in slightly different notation, Ismail (2009, §§2.3, 2.6, 2.10), where it is assumed that . See also the extended development of these ideas in §§18.30(vi), 18.30(vii), and in §18.40(ii) where they form the basis for one method of solving the classical moment problem.
This is the class of weight functions on such that, in addition to (18.2.1_5),
18.2.39 | |||
For OP’s with weight function in the class there are asymptotic formulas as , respectively for outside and for , see Szegő (1975, Theorems 12.1.2, 12.1.4). Under further conditions on the weight function there is an equiconvergence theorem, see Szegő (1975, Theorem 13.1.2). This says roughly that the series (18.2.25) has the same pointwise convergence behavior as the same series with , a Chebyshev polynomial of the first kind, see Table 18.3.1.
Nevai (1979, p.39) defined the class of orthogonality measures with support inside such that the absolutely continuous part has in the Szegő class . For OP’s with orthogonality measure in Nevai (1979, pp. 148–150) generalized Szegő’s equiconvergence theorem. In further generalizations of the class discrete mass points outside are allowed. If these satisfy then Szegő type asymptotics outside can be given for the corresponding OP’s, see Simon (2011, Corollary 3.7.2 and following).
The class (, ), introduced by Nevai (1979, p.10), consists of all orthogonality measures such that the coefficients and in the recurrence relation (18.2.11_8) for the corresponding orthonormal OP’s satisfy
18.2.40 | ||||
If then the interval is included in the support of , and outside the measure only has discrete mass points such that are the only possible limit points of the sequence , see Máté et al. (1991, Theorem 10). Part of this theorem was already proved by Blumenthal (1898). Therefore this class is also called the Nevai–Blumenthal class.
For OP’s with and orthogonality relation as in (18.2.5) and (18.2.5_5), the Poisson kernel is defined by
18.2.41 | |||
, | |||
for in the support of the orthogonality measure and such that the series in (18.2.41) converges absolutely for all these . Instances where the Poisson kernel is nonnegative are of special interest, see Ismail (2009, Theorem 4.7.12).
For a large class of OP’s there exist pairs of differentiation formulas
18.2.42 | ||||
18.2.43 | ||||
see Ismail (2009, (3.2.3), (3.2.10)). If and are polynomials of degree independent of , and moreover is a polynomial independent of then
18.2.44 | |||
for certain coefficients with independent of . Then the OP’s are called semi-classical and (18.2.44) is called a structure relation.
Polynomials of degree () are called Sheffer polynomials if they are generated by a generating function of the form
18.2.45 | |||
where and are formal power series in , with , and . Often a standardization is taken. If is the formal power series such that then a property equivalent to (18.2.45) with is that
18.2.46 | |||
The operator is a delta operator, i.e., commutes with translation in the variable and is a nonzero constant.
The generating functions (18.12.13), (18.12.15), (18.23.3), (18.23.4), (18.23.5) and (18.23.7) for Laguerre, Hermite, Krawtchouk, Meixner, Charlier and Meixner–Pollaczek polynomials, respectively, can be written in the form (18.2.45). In fact, these are the only OP’s which are Sheffer polynomials (with Krawtchouk polynomials being only a finite system)