New representation and factorizations of the higher-order ultraspherical-type differential equations (Q401351)

The author studies linear differential operators \({\mathbf L}\) annihilated by the polynomials \(\{P_n^{\alpha,M}(x)\}_{n=0}^{\infty}\) orthogonal on the interval \([-1;1]\) with respect to the weight function \(w(x)=C(1-x^2)^{\alpha}+M(\delta(x+1)+\delta(x-1))\). Here \(C\) is a normalizing constant, \(\alpha\in{\mathbb Z}_+\) and \(M\) is a ``mass'' constant parameter. It is known that such differential operators have the order \(2\alpha+4\) and rather complicated coefficients among which only the constant term depends on the degree of the polynomial \(n\). Thus the latter constant term can be understood as the ``eigenvalue'' corresponding to the polynomial ``eigenfunction''. The \(n\)-independent differential part of all these linear operators can be naturally represented as the sum of the classical second-order ultraspherical part \({\mathbf L}_{2,x}^{\alpha}\) and the higher-order non-classical part \({\mathbf L}_{2\alpha+4,x}\) multiplied by the ``mass'' parameter \(M\). The author proves that the non-classical part admits an amazingly simple representation as the superposition of the multiplication and differentiation operators, \({\mathbf L}_{2\alpha+4,x}y(x)=(x^2-1)D_x^{2\alpha+4}[(x^2-1)^{\alpha+1}y(x)]\). Using this representation, the orthogonality of the polynomial ``eigenfunctions'' is obtained using elementary means. Furthermore the higher-order part admits two equivalent factorizations into a product of \(\alpha+2\) second-order differential operators moreover factors of one of these factorization commute.