A differential analogue of Favard's theorem (Q2066117)

In this contribution, the authors present a differential analogue of the well-known Favard's theorem corresponding to orthogonal polynomials and highlight some interesting consequences. Indeed, they consider a sequence of functions \(\{\varphi_{n}\}_{n \geq0}\) fulfilling \begin{align*} \varphi_{0}'(x) & = \beta_{0} \varphi_{0}(x)+\gamma_{0}\varphi_{1}(x), \\ \varphi_{n}'(x) & = \alpha_{n}\varphi_{n-1}(x)+\beta_{n} \varphi_{n}(x)+\gamma_{n}\varphi_{n+1}(x), \; n \geq1, \end{align*} for some real sequences \((\alpha_{n})_{n \geq1}, \, (\beta_{n})_{n \geq0}, \, (\gamma_{n})_{n \geq0},\) where \(\varphi_{0}\) is taken as a given smooth function. Orthogonality and completeness of such sequences are studied in detail and some examples are well developed. The theory of differential analogue is an interesting one do to the connections between orthogonal polynomials, Fourier analysis, and Paley-Wiener spaces, and the resulting identities between different families of special functions. For the entire collection see [Zbl 1479.47003].