Double Lowering Operators on Polynomial

Abstract

Recently Sarah Bockting-Conrad introduced the double lowering operator $\psi$ for a tridiagonal pair. Motivated by $\psi$ we consider the following problem about polynomials. Let $\mathbb F$ denote an algebraically closed field. Let $x$ denote an indeterminate, and let $\mathbb F\lbrack x \rbrack$ denote the algebra consisting of the polynomials in $x$ that have all coefficients in $\mathbb F$. Let $N$ denote a positive integer or $\infty$. Let $\lbrace a_i\rbrace_{i=0}^{N-1}$, $\lbrace b_i\rbrace_{i=0}^{N-1}$ denote scalars in $\mathbb F$ such that $\sum_{h=0}^{i-1} a_h \not= \sum_{h=0}^{i-1} b_h$ for $1 \leq i \leq N$. For $0 \leq i \leq N$ define polynomials $\tau_i, \eta_i \in \mathbb F\lbrack x \rbrack$ by $\tau_i = \prod_{h=0}^{i-1} (x-a_h)$ and $\eta_i = \prod_{h=0}^{i-1} (x-b_h)$. Let $V$ denote the subspace of $\mathbb F\lbrack x \rbrack$ spanned by $\lbrace x^i\rbrace_{i=0}^N$. An element $\psi \in \operatorname{End}(V)$ is called double lowering whenever $\psi \tau_i \in \mathbb F \tau_{i-1}$ and $\psi \eta_i \in \mathbb F \eta_{i-1}$ for $0 \leq i \leq N$, where $\tau_{-1}=0$ and $\eta_{-1}=0$. We give necessary and sufficient conditions on $\lbrace a_i\rbrace_{i=0}^{N-1}$, $\lbrace b_i\rbrace_{i=0}^{N-1}$ for there to exist a nonzero double lowering map. There are four families of solutions, which we describe in detail.