A Jacobi operator, also known as Jacobi matrix, is a symmetric linear operator acting on sequences which is given by a tridiagonal matrix in the standard basis given by Kronecker deltas. This operator is named after Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi.
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Self-adjoint Jacobi operators
The most important case is the one of self-adjoint Jacobi operators acting on the Hilbert space of square summable sequences over the positive integers
where the coefficients are assumed to satisfy
The operator will be bounded if and only if the coefficients are.
There are close connections with the theory of orthogonal polynomials. In fact, the solution p(z,n) of the recurrence relation
is a polynomial of degree n − 1 and these polynomials are orthonormal with respect to the spectral measure corresponding to the first basis vector
Applications
It arises in many areas of mathematics and physics. The case a(n) = 1 is known as the discrete one-dimensional Schrödinger operator. It also arises in: