We consider direct and inverse Jacobi transforms with measures

$$\begin{align*}d\mu(t)=2^{2\rho}(\operatorname{sinh} t)^{2\alpha+1}(\operatorname{cosh} t)^{2\beta+1}\,dt\end{align*}$$

$$\begin{align*}d\sigma(\lambda)=(2\pi)^{-1}\Bigl|\frac{2^{\rho-i\lambda}\Gamma(\alpha+1)\Gamma(i\lambda)} {\Gamma((\rho+i\lambda)/2)\Gamma((\rho+i\lambda)/2-\beta)}\Bigr|^{-2}\,d\lambda,\end{align*}$$

$$\begin{align*}\inf\Lambda((-1)^{m-1}f), \quad m\in \mathbb{N}, \end{align*}$$

$\Lambda (f)=\sup \,\{\lambda>0\colon f(\lambda )>0\}$

$m\ge 2$

$\int _{0}^{\infty }\lambda ^{2k}f(\lambda )\,d\sigma (\lambda )=0$

$k=0,\dots ,m-2$

We prove that admissible functions for this problem are positive-definite with respect to the inverse Jacobi transform. The solution of Logan’s problem was known only when $\alpha =\beta =-1/2$. We find a unique (up to multiplication by a positive constant) extremizer $f_m$. The corresponding Logan problem for the Fourier transform on the hyperboloid $\mathbb {H}^{d}$ is also solved. Using the properties of the extremizer $f_m$ allows us to give an upper estimate of the length of a minimal interval containing not less than n zeros of positive definite functions. Finally, we show that the Jacobi functions form the Chebyshev systems.

Classical finite association schemes lead to finite-dimensional algebras which are generated by finitely many stochastic matrices. Moreover, there exist associated finite hypergroups. The notion of classical discrete association schemes can be easily extended to the possibly infinite case. Moreover, this notion can be relaxed slightly by using suitably deformed families of stochastic matrices by skipping the integrality conditions. This leads to a larger class of examples which are again associated with discrete hypergroups. In this paper we propose a topological generalization of association schemes by using a locally compact basis space $X$ and a family of Markov-kernels on $X$ indexed by some locally compact space $D$ where the supports of the associated probability measures satisfy some partition property. These objects, called continuous association schemes, will be related to hypergroup structures on $D$. We study some basic results for this notion and present several classes of examples. It turns out that, for a given commutative hypergroup, the existence of a related continuous association scheme implies that the hypergroup has many features of a double coset hypergroup. We, in particular, show that commutative hypergroups, which are associated with commutative continuous association schemes, carry dual positive product formulas for the characters. On the other hand, we prove some rigidity results in particular in the compact case which say that for given spaces $X,D$ there are only a few continuous association schemes.

The century-old extremal problem, solved by Carathéodory and Fejér, concerns a non-negative trigonometric polynomial $T(t) = a_0 + \sum\nolimits_{k = 1}^n {a_k} \cos (2\pi kt) + b_k\sin (2\pi kt){\ge}0$, normalized by a0=1, where the quantity to be maximized is the coefficient a1 of cos (2π t). Carathéodory and Fejér found that for any given degree n, the maximum is 2 cos(π/n+2). In the complex exponential form, the coefficient sequence (ck) ⊂ ℂ will be supported in [−n, n] and normalized by c0=1. Reformulating, non-negativity of T translates to positive definiteness of the sequence (ck), and the extremal problem becomes a maximization problem for the value at 1 of a normalized positive definite function c: ℤ → ℂ, supported in [−n, n]. Boas and Kac, Arestov, Berdysheva and Berens, Kolountzakis and Révész and, recently, Krenedits and Révész investigated the problem in increasing generality, reaching analogous results for all locally compact abelian groups. We prove an extension to all the known results in not necessarily commutative locally compact groups.

We prove that if ${\it\rho}$ is an irreducible positive definite function in the Fourier–Stieltjes algebra $B(G)$ of a locally compact group $G$ with $\Vert {\it\rho}\Vert _{B(G)}=1$, then the iterated powers $({\it\rho}^{n})$ as a sequence of unital completely positive maps on the group $C^{\ast }$-algebra converge to zero in the strong operator topology.

We introduce and investigate using Hilbert modules the properties of the Fourier algebra$A(G)$ for a locally compact groupoid $G$. We establish a duality theorem for such groupoids in terms of multiplicative module maps. This includes as a special case the classical duality theorem for locally compact groups proved by P. Eymard.