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The arithmetic of certain semigroups of positive operators

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

John Lamperti
Affiliation:
Department of Pure Mathematics, Cambridge

Extract

Some time ago, S. Bochner gave an interesting analysis of certain positive operators which are associated with the ultraspherical polynomials (1,2). Let {Pn(x)} denote these polynomials, which are orthogonal on [ − 1, 1 ] with respect to the measure

and which are normalized by settigng Pn(1) = 1. (The fixed parameter γ will not be explicitly shown.) A sequence t = {tn} of real numbers is said to be ‘positive definite’, which we will indicate by writing , provided that

Here the coefficients an are real, and the prime on the summation sign means that only a finite number of terms are different from 0. This condition can be rephrased by considering the set of linear operators on the space of real polynomials which have diagonal matrices with respect to the basis {Pn(x)}, and noting that

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge Philosophical Society 1968

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References

REFERENCES

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