The Laguerre-Sobolev-type orthogonal polynomials. Holonomic equation and electrostatic interpretation (Q627374)

The authors find the second order linear differential equation satisfied by the orthogonal polynomials with respect to the inner Sobolev-type product \[ \langle p,q\rangle = \int_0^\infty p(x) q(x) x^\alpha e^{-x} \,dx +N p'(0) q'(0), \] where \(\alpha >-1\), \(N\in \mathbb{R}^+\) and \(p,q\) are polynomials with real coefficients. Note that the case \(N=0\) would correspond to the case of classical Laguerre polynomials. To find the equation, they use the following approach: First, they establish a connection formula which expresses the Laguerre-Sobolev-type polynomials as a combination of three consecutive Laguerre polynomials. They then find a holonomic equation and derive the hypergeometric representation. Furthermore, the location of the zeros is investigated and some numerical results are provided in order to interpret the zeros from an electrostatic point of view. In the final section, the authors give various results about the asymptotic behavior of these polynomials in terms of expansions with Bessel functions.