Operator monotone functions, Jacobi operators and orthogonal polynomials (Q1947437)

Let \(f\) be a real valued continuous function defined on an interval \(I\). Let \(A\) be a bounded self-adjoint operator on a Hilbert space whose spectrum is a subset of \(I\). Then \(f(A)\) denotes the ordinary functional calculus. We say that \(f\) is operator monotone on \(I\) if \(A \leq B\) implies that \(f(A) \leq f(B)\), where ``\(\leq \)'' is the Löwner partial order. Now, let \(A,B\) be bounded self-adjoint operators whose spectra lie in \((-1,1)\). The author proves that \(f\) is operator monotone on \((-1,1)\) if and only if there is a contractive (the operator norm is strictly less than 1) Jacobi operator on \(\ell ^2\) (the Hilbert space of square summable complex sequences) or the \(n\)-dimensional unitary space such that \(f(t)=f(0) + f'(0)\langle t(1-tJ)^{-1}e^0,e^0 \rangle\), where \(e^0\) is the first vector of the standard orthonormal basis of \(\ell ^2\) or \(\mathbb{C}^n\). Moreover, the author shows that, if \(f\) is operator monotone on \(I\) (where \(I\) now denotes any open interval), then \(f\) can be obtained as a pointwise limit of a sequence of operator monotone functions on \(I\) with the proviso that the convergence is uniform over any compact subset of \(I\). It is also shown that the ``principal inverse'' of an orthogonal polynomial is operator monotone.