A generalization of a result of G. Pólya and its application to a continuous extension of the de la Vallée Poussin means (Q1028405)

In this paper the author establish variation diminishing properties for the periodic kernels \((1+\cos t)^\lambda\), \(\lambda=\frac12+n\), \(n\in \mathbb Z^+\). On the real axis, there are related variation diminishing properties of the functions \(u^m\operatorname{sgn}u\), which are the Green's functions for the differential operator \(D^{(m+1)}\). We recall here the generalized kernel \[ \omega_{\lambda}(t):= \frac{\Gamma(\lambda +1)^2}{\Gamma(2\lambda +1)} (1+\cos t)^\lambda. \] \textit{S. Ruscheweyh} and \textit{T. J. Suffridge} [J. Anal. Math. 89, 155--167 (2003; Zbl 1033.30015)] established many interesting results for this kernel and the associated convolution operator \[ V_\lambda(f,x)= \frac{1}{2\pi} \int_0^{2\pi} \omega_{\lambda}(x-t) f(t)\,dt, \] defined for a \(2\pi\)-periodic function \(f\). The authors consider a finite sequence of real numbers \(a_1,\dots,a_n\) and define \(v_c(a_j)\), the cyclic changes of sign of \(\{a_j\}\), as follows: If \(a_{j}=0\) for all \(j\), set \(v_{c}(a_{j})=0\). If \(a_{i}\neq 0\) for some \(i\), \(v_{c}(a_{j})\) is the number of changes of sign in \[ a_{i}, a_{i+1}, \dots , a_{n}, a_{1}, \dots , a_{i-1}, a_{i}\, . \] This value is independent of the nonzero \(a_{i}\) chosen and is an even number. Now let \(g\) be a real-valued, \(2\pi\)-period function and let \[ t_{1}<t_{2}< \cdots <t_{n}<t_{1}+2\pi. \] Define the number \(v_{c}(g)\) of cyclic changes of sign of \(g\) by \(v_{c}(g)= \sup v_{c}(g(t_{j}))\) where the supremum is taken over all finite sequences \(\{ t_{j}\}\) satisfying the above condition. If this supremum is finite, \(v_{c}(g)\) is even. The main result is given by the theorem If \(g\) is real-valued, \(2\pi\)-periodic, and \(g\in L^{I}[0,2\pi ]\), then \(v_{c}(V_{\lambda})\leq v_{c}(g)\) whenever \(\lambda = \frac{2k+1}{2}\), \(k=0,1,2, \dots\) This says precisely that the transformation \(g\rightarrow V_{\lambda} = \omega_\lambda*g\) is the variation diminishing for the half-integers \(\lambda=\frac{2k+1}{2}\).