Positivity of Turán determinants for orthogonal polynomials. II (Q822728)

Given a sequence of polynomials \(\{P_n\}_{n\geq 0}\), the Turán determinants are defined by \[ \Delta_n(x):=P_n^2(x)-P_{n-1}(x)P_{n+1}(x), \qquad n\geq 1. \] In the case when the polynomials \(P_n\) satisfy certain three-term recurrence relations, the author gives a sufficient condition in terms of the recurrence coefficients for the Turán determinants to be nonnegative on \([-1,1]\). The main assumption on the coefficients is in general hard to verify, so the author suggests a corollary which applies to a number of specific polynomial sequences. Corollary 1. Assume that a polynomial sequence \(\{p_n\}_{n\geq 0}\), with \newline \(p_n(x)=\kappa_n x^n+\ldots\), \ \(\kappa_n>0\), satisfies \[ xp_n(x)=\gamma_n p_{n+1}(x)+\alpha_n p_{n-1}(x), \qquad n\geq 0, \quad \alpha_0=p_{-1}=p_0-1=0. \] Assume also that \[ \alpha_n=\frac12-\alpha\delta_n, \qquad \gamma_n=\frac12+\gamma\delta_n, \qquad n\geq0, \] where \(\alpha\geq\gamma>0\) and \(\delta_n\) monotonically decreases to zero. Then \[ \Delta_n(x)\geq 0, \quad -1\leq x\leq 1, \qquad P_n(x):=\frac{p_n(x)}{p_n(1)}\,, \qquad n\geq 0. \] \par For Part I, see [the author, in: Harmonic analysis and hypergroups. Proceedings of the international conference, Delhi, India, December 18--22, 1995. Boston, MA: Birkhäuser. 165--182 (1998; Zbl 0884.33006)].