Center for                           Nonlinear Analysis CNA Home People Seminars Publications Workshops and Conferences CNA Working Groups CNA Comments Form Summer Schools Summer Undergraduate Institute PIRE Cooperation Graduate Topics Courses SIAM Chapter Seminar Positions Contact Publication 14-CNA-001 On generating functions of Hausdorff moment sequences Jian-Guo Liu Departments of Physics and Mathematics Duke University Durham, NC 27708 Robert L. Pego Department of Mathematical Sciences Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213 Abstract: The class of generating functions for completely monotone sequences (moments of finite positive measures on $[0,1]$) has an elegant characterization as the class of Pick functions analytic and positive on $(-\infty,1)$. We establish this and another such characterization and develop a variety of consequences. In particular, we characterize generating functions for moments of convex and concave probability distribution functions on $[0,1]$. Also we provide a simple analytic proof that for any real $p$ and $r$ with $p>0$, the Fuss-Catalan or Raney numbers $\frac{r}{pn+r}\binom{pn+r}{n}$, $n=0,1,\ldots$ are the moments of a probability distribution on some interval $[0,\tau]$ {if and only if} $p\ge1$ and $p\ge r\ge 0$. The same statement holds for the binomial coefficients $\binom{pn+r-1}n$, $n=0,1,\ldots$. Get the paper in its entirety as Back to CNA Publications