On a conjecture of A. Magnus concerning the asymptotic behavior of the recurrence coefficients of the generalized Jacobi polynomials (Q968977)

This well written deep paper proves and extends a conjecture due to \textit{A. Magnus} [Ann. Numer. Math. 2, No. 1-4, 311--325 (1995; Zbl 0855.42013)] on the complete asymptotics for the coefficients \(a_n,b_n\) in the form \[ a_n={1\over 2}+\sum_{k=1}^{\infty}\,{A_k(n)\over n^k},\quad b_n=\sum_{k=1}^{\infty}\,{B_k(n)\over n^k} \] for \(n\rightarrow\infty\), where for every \(k\) the coefficients \(A_k(n),B_k(n)\) are bounded in \(n\) (for \(k=1\) they are given explicitly). The coefficients follow from \[ P_{n+1}(z)=(z-b_n)P_n(z)-a_n^2 P_{n-1}(z), \] with \(P_n\) the orthogonal polynomials with respect to the generalized Jacobi weight \[ w_{c,\gamma}(x)=(1-x)^{\alpha}(1+x)^{\beta}(x_0-x)^{\gamma}h(x)G_c(x),\;x\in [-1,1]. \] Here \(x_0\in (-1,1),\alpha,\beta,\gamma>-1,\;h\) is real analytic and strictly positive on \([-1,1]\), \(G_c(x)\) is a step-like function, equal to \(1\) on \([-1,x_0)\) and \(c^2>0\) on \([x_0,1]\). As expected, the proofs of the results use the modern tool of the (non-commutative) Riemann-Hilbert problem characterizing the orthogonal polynomials (steepest descent analysis).