Asymptotics of orthogonal polynomials for a weight with a jump on \([-1,1]\) (Q628671)

The authors study the asymptotics of orthogonal polynomials on the interval \([-1,1]\) with respect to a modified Jacobi weight function of the form \[ w_c(x)=h(x)(1-x)^{\alpha}(1+x)^{\beta}\Theta_c(x) \] with \(c>0\), \(\alpha>-1\) and \(\beta>-1\), \(h(x)\) is real analytic and strictly positive on \([-1,1]\) and \[ \Theta_c(x)=\begin{cases} 1, & -1\leq x<0\\c^2, & 0\leq x\leq 1.\end{cases} \] Note that \(\Theta_1(x)=1\); the corresponding weight \(w_1(x)\) was considered in [\textit{A. B. J. Kuijlaars, K. T.-R. McLaughlin, W. Van Assche} and \textit{M. Vanlesen}, Adv. Math. 188(2), 337--398 (2004; Zbl 1082.42017)]. For \(c\neq 1\) the main asymptotic difference between the polynomials orthogonal with respect to \(w_1\) and \(w_c\) lies in their behavior near the origin. The authors obtain strong uniform asymptotics of the monic orthogonal polynomials in \(\mathbb{C}\), as well as first terms of the asymptotic expansion of the main parameters (leading coefficients of the orthonormal polynomials and the recurrence coefficients) for \(n\rightarrow\infty\). In particular, a conjecture of A. Magnus is proved for \(w_c\) regarding the asymptotics of the recurrence coefficients. The main focus is on the local analysis at the origin. The asymptotics of the Christoffel-Darboux kernel is derived in a neighborhood of the jump and it is shown that the zeros of the orthogonal polynomials no longer exhibit so-called ``clock behavior'' which means that \[ \lim_{n\rightarrow\infty}\frac{n}{\pi}(x_{j+1}^{(n)}-x_j^{(n)})=1,\quad j\in\mathbb{Z}, \] where \(x_j^{(n)}\) denotes a zero of the \(n\)th orthogonal polynomial.