Two-step Darboux transformations and exceptional Laguerre polynomials (Q645403)

The authors give a positive answer to a natural question about if the isospectral Darboux transformation can be iterated in a Darboux-Crum form in order to obtain families of exceptional orthogonal polynomials. Like the classical orthogonal polynomials, the exceptional ones are eigenfunctions of a second-order differential operator, but the sequence of eigenfunctions need not contain polynomials of all degrees, even though they all form a basis of a weighted \(L^2\) space. In the first part of the paper, the two-step exceptional Laguerre polynomials are introduced and their relation to second order linear differential operators is established. This family is indexed by two integer parameters \((m_1,m_2)\) and a real parameter \(k\). The sequence starts with degree \(l=m_1+m_2-1\) and for particular values of these parameters, the classical Laguerre and the type II \(X_l\)-Laguerre polynomials are recovered. Thus, the authors have shown how the iterated Darboux or Darboux-Crum transformation can be used to construct new families of exceptional orthogonal polynomials of Laguerre type. Moreover, they state their completeness in a weighted \(L^2\) space endowed with a non-singular weight and they also obtain the orthogonality properties.