Index of positivity of linear functionals: the Hermite case (Q6943343)

The paper is devoted to the systematic study of the index of positivity of normalized linear functionals on the polynomial space \(\mathbb{R}[x]\), a notion recently introduced as a Cauchy-type extension of integer powers to real powers of linear functionals via the exponential map in the Cauchy product algebra. Within the general topological framework of the strong dual \(\mathcal{P}^{\prime }\) of \(\mathcal{P}=\mathbb{R}[x]\), the authors recall the basic operations (derivatives, shifts, dilations, Cauchy products) and the concepts of positivity, positive-definiteness and weak regularity, and they focus on the Hermite linear functional \(H\) and its companions in the class of \(D\)-classical functionals. The central objective is to clarify when the real Cauchy powers \(u^{\lambda }\) remain positive or positive-definite and to exhibit concrete, nontrivial examples where the index of positivity \(\mathrm{Ind}_{p}(u)\) is infinite.\N\NThe main technical contribution is a careful analysis of the Cauchy-exponential \(e^{u}\) of a linear functional \(u\in \mathcal{P}^{\prime }\), including continuity properties of the exponential map on \(\mathcal{P}^{\prime }\) and the representation \(e^{u}=\sum_{n\geq 0}u^{n}/n!\) in the strong dual topology. This functional calculus is then used to show that the class of functionals with infinite index of positivity is stable under exponentiation. On this basis, the authors perform a detailed study of the Hermite functional \(H\), deriving differential and Pearson-type equations for the self Cauchy product \(H^{2}\), establishing an explicit integral representation in terms of a Dawson-type weight, and proving that \(H^{n}\) is positive-definite for every integer \(n\geq 1\) by means of a recursive functional equation and associated weight functions \(U_{n}(x)\) with good regularity and decay. As a consequence, they obtain \(\mathrm{Ind}_{p}(H)=+\infty \) and, via the exponential map and the \(\sigma\)-transformation, the same property for \(e^{H}\) and for the Laguerre functional \(L^{(-1/2)}\) and its exponential. These results provide the first nontrivial examples of \(D\)-classical functionals with infinite positivity index and answer in a definitive way a question posed in earlier work on the subject.\N\NOverall, the article offers a concise and well structured contribution that combines algebraic, analytic and topological techniques in a coherent way, and it clarifies the behaviour of Cauchy powers for paradigmatic classical functionals such as Hermite and Laguerre. The proofs are carefully organized, with a good balance between functional-analytic arguments on \(\mathcal{P}^{\prime }\) and concrete constructions of weight functions, and the integral representations obtained for \(H^{n}\) illustrate nicely how the abstract framework translates into explicit formulas of potential interest in orthogonal polynomials, special functions and moment problems. The approach seems robust enough to be adapted to other families of \(D\)-classical or Laguerre-Hahn functionals, and the notion of positivity index highlighted here may become a useful organizing concept in future investigations on powers and deformations of linear functionals beyond the symmetric Hermite case.