Stieltjes Moment Problems and the Friedrichs Extension of a Positive Definite Operator

Abstract

For an indeterminate Stieltjes moment sequence the multiplication operator Mp(x) = xp(x) is positive definite and has self-adjoint extensions. Exactly one of these extensions has the same lower bound as M, the so-called Friedrichs extension. The spectral measure of this extension gives a certain solution to the moment problem and we identify the corresponding parameter value in the Nevanlinna parametrization of all solutions to the moment problem. In the case where σ is indeterminate in the sense of Stieltjes, relations between the (Nevanlinna matrices of) entire functions associated with the measures t^kdσ(t) are derived. The growth of these entire functions is also investigated.