A generalization of Favard's theorem for polynomials satisfying a recurrence relation (Q2366707)

The author gives the canonical expression for an inner product (defined in \({\mathcal P}\), the linear space of real polynomials), for which the set of orthonormal polynomials satisfies a \((2N+1)\)-term recurrence relation. This result is a generalization of Favard's theorem about orthogonal polynomials and three-term recurrence relations. The author also characterizes these inner products in terms of symmetric operators. Similar results are proved for some kinds of discrete Sobolev inner products.