A sequence of unimodal polynomials (Q1306869)

In this paper, the authors establish unimodality of (the sequence of coefficients of) Jacobi polynomials. Recall that \(P(x)= \sum^m_{j=0} d_jx^j\) is said to be unimodal if the coefficients increase up to a certain index, \(j\) say, and then decrease: \[ d_0\leq d_1\leq d_2<\cdots\leq d_j \geq d_{j+1}\geq d_{j+2}\geq \cdots\geq d_m. \] The specific polynomials considered are Jacobi polynomials \(P_m^{(\alpha,\beta)}\) with \(\alpha=m+{1\over 2}\); \(\beta=- m-{1\over 2}\). Note that because \(\beta<-1\), this is not a classical orthogonal polynomial. In addition to proving that these polynomials are unimodal, the authors analyze the distribution of zeros of these polynomials. In particular, they count the number of real zeros, establish regions in which all the zeros lie, and provide numerical plots. The latter indicate the presence of a Szegő curve, similar to that obtained by Szegő for suitably normalised partial sums of the exponential function.