A characterization of the classical orthogonal discrete and \(q\)-polynomials (Q869523)

Let \(P\) be the linear space of polynomial functions in \(\mathbb C\) with complex coefficients and let \(P^*\) be its algebraic dual space. The forward difference operator \(\Delta\) and the \(q\)-derivative operator \({\mathcal D}_q\) on \(P\) are given by \[ \Delta y(x)=y(x+1)-y(x) \quad \text{and}\quad {\mathcal D}_q\pi(x)={\pi(qx)-\pi(x)\over (q-1)x },\quad | q| \not=0,1. \] Let \(u\in P^*\) be a quasi-define functional and let \(\{P_n\}_{n\geq 0}\) be the monic orthogonal polynomial sequence (MOPS, for shorter) with respect to the functional \(u\). We say \(\{P_n\}_{n\geq 0}\) is a \(\Delta\)-classical (resp. \(q\)-classical) MOPS iff the sequence \(\{\Delta P_n\}_{n\geq 1}\) (resp. \(\{{\mathcal D}_q P_n\}_{n\geq 1}\)) is also orthogonal. In the literature there exist many characterization theorems for the \(\Delta\)-classical and \(q\)-classical MOPSs. In this paper, the authors present another one which asserts that \(\{P_n\}_{n\geq 0}\) is a \(\Delta\)-classical (resp. \(q\)-classical) MOPS iff for every \(n\geq 1\) \[ P_nu=\Delta(\alpha_{n-1}\phi u)\quad \text{(resp.}\;\;P_nu={\mathcal D}_q(\alpha_{n-1}\phi u)) \] where \(\alpha_{n-1}\) is a polynomial of degree \(n-1\) and \(\phi \) is a polynomial of degree less or equal to~2.