The Jacobi-Sobolev, Laguerre-Sobolev, and Gegenbauer-Sobolev differential equations and their interrelations

Abstract

Recently, the author determined the higher-order differential operator having the Jacobi-Sobolev polynomials as its eigenfunctions for certain eigenvalues. These polynomials form an orthogonal system with respect to an inner product equipped with the Jacobi measure on the interval [ − 1 , 1 ] with parameters α ∈ N 0 , β > − 1 and two point masses N, S>0 at the right end point of the interval involving functions and their first derivatives. The first purpose of the present paper is to reveal how the Jacobi-Sobolev equation reduces to the differential equation satisfied by the Laguerre-Sobolev polynomials on the positive half line via a confluent limiting process as β → ∞ . Secondly, we explicitly establish the differential equation for the symmetric Gegenbauer-Sobolev polynomials by employing a quadratic transformation of the argument. Each of the three differential operators involved is of order 4 α + 10 and symmetric with respect to the corresponding Sobolev inner product.