Hankel determinants for a singular complex weight and the first and third Painlevé transcendents (Q259095)

In this paper the authors study the orthogonal polynomials with respect to a singularly perturbed Laguerre weight \(e^{-n (z-\log z+t/z)}\) in the region \(t < 0\) and \(z\) on certain curves in the complex plane. In particular, they prove that for fixed degree \(k\) the corresponding Hankel determinant is related to the isomonodromy \(\tau\)-function of a particular Painlevé III equation, and the recurrence coefficients satisfy the same Painlevé equation with certain initial values. The authors also prove that if \(k=n\), then when \(n \rightarrow \infty\) and \(t \rightarrow t_{cr}\) (a critical value of \(t\)) simultaneously, the asymptotic behavior of the Hankel determinant, the recurrence coefficients and the leading coefficients of the orthonormal polynomials can be expressed in terms of the so called tronquée solution of the Painlevé I equation. To obtain these asymptotic expansions the authors utilize the nonlinear steepest descent method for Riemann-Hilbert problems, developed by Deift and Zhou.