General linearization formulae for products of continuous hypergeometric-type polynomials

Abstract

The linearization of products of wavefunctions of exactly solvable potentials often reduces to the generalized linearization problem for hypergeometric polynomials (HPs) of a continuous variable, which consists of the expansion of the product of two arbitrary HPs in series of an orthogonal HP set. Here, this problem is algebraically solved directly in terms of the coefficients of the second-order differential equations satisfied by the involved polynomials. General expressions for the expansion coefficients are given in integral form, and they are applied to derive the connection formulae relating the three classical families of hypergeometric polynomials orthogonal on the real axis (Hermite, Laguerre and Jacobi), as well as several generalized linearization formulae involving these families. The connection and linearization coefficients are generally expressed as finite sums of terminating hypergeometric functions, which often reduce to a single function of the same type; when possible, these functions are evaluated in closed form. In some cases, sign properties of the coefficients such as positivity or non-negativity conditions are derived as a by-product from their resulting explicit representations.