Software for the Algorithmic Work with Orthogonal Polynomials and Special Functions

Wolfram Koepf

Published 1998-09-22Version 1

In the last decade major steps towards an algorithmic treatment of orthogonal polynomials and special functions (OP & SF) have been made, notably Zeilberger's brilliant extension of Gosper's algorithm on algorithmic definite hypergeometric summation. By implementations of these and other algorithms symbolic computation has the potential to change the daily work of everybody who uses orthogonal polynomials or special functions in research or applications. It can be expected that symbolic computation will also play an important role in on-line versions of major revisions of existing formula books in the area of OP & SF. It this couple of talks I present software in Maple of those algorithmic techniques, in particular of Gosper's, Zeilberger's, and Petkovsek's algorithms and their q-analogoues. Some implementational details are discussed. The main emphasis, however, is given to on-line demonstrations of these algorithms using our Maple implementations (jointly with Harald Boeing) covering many examples from the field of OP & SF.