The Finite Hankel Transform Operator: Some Explicit and Local Estimates of the Eigenfunctions and Eigenvalues Decay Rates

For fixed real numbers \(c>0,\)\(\alpha >-\frac{1}{2},\) the finite Hankel transform operator, denoted by \(\mathcal {H}_c^{\alpha }\) is given by the integral operator defined on \(L^2(0,1)\) with kernel \(K_{\alpha }(x,y)= \sqrt{c xy} J_{\alpha }(cxy).\) To the operator \(\mathcal {H}_c^{\alpha },\) we associate a positive, self-adjoint compact integral operator \(\mathcal Q_c^{\alpha }=c\, \mathcal {H}_c^{\alpha }\, \mathcal {H}_c^{\alpha }.\) Note that the integral operators \(\mathcal {H}_c^{\alpha }\) and \(\mathcal Q_c^{\alpha }\) commute with a Sturm-Liouville differential operator \(\mathcal D_c^{\alpha }.\) In this paper, we first give some useful estimates and bounds of the eigenfunctions \(\varphi ^{(\alpha )}_{n,c}\) of \(\mathcal H_c^{\alpha }\) or \(\mathcal Q_c^{\alpha }.\) These estimates and bounds are obtained by using some special techniques from the theory of Sturm-Liouville operators, that we apply to the differential operator \(\mathcal D_c^{\alpha }.\) If \((\mu _{n,\alpha }(c))_n\) and \(\lambda _{n,\alpha }(c)=c\, |\mu _{n,\alpha }(c)|^2\) denote the infinite and countable sequence of the eigenvalues of the operators \(\mathcal {H}_c^{(\alpha )}\) and \(\mathcal Q_c^{\alpha },\) arranged in the decreasing order of their magnitude, then we show an unexpected result that for a given integer \(n\ge 0,\)\(\lambda _{n,\alpha }(c)\) is decreasing with respect to the parameter \(\alpha .\) As a consequence, we show that for \(\alpha \ge \frac{1}{2},\) the \(\lambda _{n,\alpha }(c)\) and the \(\mu _{n,\alpha }(c)\) have a super-exponential decay rate. Also, we give a lower decay rate of these eigenvalues. As it will be seen, the previous results are essential tools for the analysis of a spectral approximation scheme based on the eigenfunctions of the finite Hankel transform operator. Some numerical examples will be provided to illustrate the results of this work.