In mathematics, the Meixner–Pollaczek polynomials are a family of orthogonal polynomials P(λ)
n(x,φ) introduced by Meixner (1934), which up to elementary changes of variables are the same as the Pollaczek polynomials Pλ
n(x,a,b) rediscovered by Pollaczek (1949) in the case λ=1/2, and later generalized by him.
They are defined by
The first few Meixner–Pollaczek polynomials are
The Meixner–Pollaczek polynomials Pm(λ)(x;φ) are orthogonal on the real line with respect to the weight function
and the orthogonality relation is given by
The sequence of Meixner–Pollaczek polynomials satisfies the recurrence relation
The Meixner–Pollaczek polynomials are given by the Rodrigues-like formula
where w(x;λ,φ) is the weight function given above.
The Meixner–Pollaczek polynomials have the generating function