\((M,N)\)-coherent pairs of order \((m,n)\) and Sobolev orthogonal polynomials (Q2348954)

The first part of the paper is devoted to introduce and study \((M,N)\)-coherent pairs of functionals or measures of order \((m,n)\). This concept constitutes a generalization of the well known coherence of measures and it is defined as follows: ``A pair of regular linear functionals \((\mathcal{U},\mathcal{V})\) is said to be a \((M,N)\)-coherent pair of order \((m,k)\), with \(M,N,m,k\) fixed nonnegative integers, if their corresponding sequences of monic orthogonal polynomials \(\{P_n\}\) and \(\{Q_n\}\) fulfill the linear algebraic structure relation \[ \sum_{i=0}^M a_{i,n}P_{n+m-i}^{(m)}(x)= \sum_{i=0}^N b_{i,n}Q_{n+k-i}^{(m)}(x),\;\, n \geq 0, \] where \(a_{i,n}\) and \(b_{i,n}\) are complex numbers such that \(a_{M,n}\neq 0\) if \(n \geq M, b_{N,n}\neq 0\) if \(n \geq N\) and \(a_{i,n}= b_{i,n}= 0\) if \(i >n\).'' They also say that the pair of functionals is a \((M,N)\)-coherent pair of order \(m\) if it is a \((M,N)\)-coherent pair of order \((m,0)\). First the authors improve several known results by giving a complete description of the semiclassical case in the framework of \((M,N)\)-coherence of order \((m,k)\) and they also deduce some relations for the formal Stieltjes series. Since the coherence of measures has a narrow relationship with the Sobolev orthogonality, in the second part of the paper the authors consider a pair of measures \(\mu_0\) and \(\mu_1\) supported on the real line and define a Sobolev inner product, depending on a parameter \(\lambda>0\), by the following expression: \[ \langle p, q \rangle_{\lambda}= \int_{\mathbb{R}}p(x) q(x) d \mu_0+\lambda \int_{\mathbb{R}}p^{(m)}(x) q^{(m)}(x) d \mu_1,\; \,m \in \mathbb{Z^+}. \] Assuming that \((\mu_0,\mu_1)\) is a \((M,N)\)-coherent pair of order \(m\) they obtain a relation between the orthogonal polynomials with respect to \( \mu_0\) and \(\langle, \rangle_{\lambda}\), extending a fundamental algebraic property known for \((1,0)\)-coherent, \((2,0)\)-coherent, \((k+1,0)\)-coherent, \((1,1)\)-coherent and \((M,N)\)-coherent pair of order \(1\). The known algorithms for computing the Fourier-Sobolev coefficients of the Fourier expansion of functions on an appropriate Sobolev space when \((\mu_0,\mu_1)\) is a \((1,0)\)-coherent, \((2,0)\)-coherent or \((M,N)\)-coherent pair of order 1 is extended to the general case where \((\mu_0,\mu_1)\) is a \((M,N)\)-coherent pair of order \(m\). Moreover, they consider two special cases when \((\mu_0,\mu_1)\) is a \((1,1)\)-coherent or \((1,0)\)-coherent pair of order \(m\), obtaining some additional properties for some sequences involved in the algorithm. Finally, they present a numerical example to illustrate the algorithm by considering some Jacobi weights.