Asymptotic relations between the Hahn-type polynomials and Meixner–Pollaczek, Jacobi, Meixner and Krawtchouk polynomials

Abstract

It has been shown in Ferreira et al. [Asymptotic relations in the Askey scheme for hypergeometric orthogonal polynomials, Adv. in Appl. Math. 31(1) (2003) 61–85], López and Temme [Approximations of orthogonal polynomials in terms of Hermite polynomials, Methods Appl. Anal. 6 (1999) 131–146; The Askey scheme for hypergeometric orthogonal polynomials viewed from asymptotic analysis, J. Comput. Appl. Math. 133 (2001) 623–633] that the three lower levels of the Askey table of hypergeometric orthogonal polynomials are connected by means of asymptotic relations. In Ferreira et al. [Limit relations between the Hahn polynomials and the Hermite, Laguerre and Charlier polynomials, submitted for publication] we have established new asymptotic connections between the fourth level and the two lower levels. In this paper, we continue with that program and obtain asymptotic expansions between the fourth level and the third level: we derive 16 asymptotic expansions of the Hahn, dual Hahn, continuous Hahn and continuous dual Hahn polynomials in terms of Meixner–Pollaczek, Jacobi, Meixner and Krawtchouk polynomials. From these expansions, we also derive three new limits between those polynomials. Some numerical experiments show the accuracy of the approximations and, in particular, the accuracy in the approximation of the zeros of those polynomials.