Indeterminate Moment Problems within the Askey-scheme Jacob Stordal Christiansen Ph.D. thesis Defence: October 8, 2004 Thesis advisor: Christian Berg, University of Copenhagen, Denmark Evaluating committee: Henrik Schlichtkrull, University of Copenhagen, Denmark Erik Koelink, Technical University Delft, the Netherlands Henrik Laurberg Pedersen, The Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University, Denmark Institute for Mathematical Sciences · University of Copenhagen · 2004 Jacob Stordal Christiansen Department of Mathematics University of Copenhagen Universitetsparken 5 2100 Copenhagen Ø Denmark
[email protected] c 2004 Jacob Stordal Christiansen (according to the Danish legislation) with the exception of the three papers (which are included): • The moment problem associated with the q-Laguerre polynomials, c 2002 Springer-Verlag New York Inc. • The moment problem associated with the Stieltjes–Wigert polynomials, c 2002 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved. • A moment problem and a family of integral evaluations, c 2003 American Mathematical Society. ISBN 87-7834-609-6 Preface The great Russian mathematician Chebychev once asked the following question: If for some positive function f, ∞ ∞ Z Z 2 xnf(x)dx = xne−x dx, n = 0, 1,... −∞ −∞ 2 can we then conclude that f(x) = e−x ? With the terminology of today, this is the same as to ask if the normal density is uniquely deter- mined by its moment sequence and it is well-known that the answer is yes in the sense that 2 f(x) = e−x almost everywhere with respect to the Lebesgue measure on R. But what happens if the normal density is replaced with something else? Can we still count on the same answer? In general, no.