A characterization of Leonard pairs using the notion of a tail

Let V denote a vector space with finite positive dimension. We consider an ordered pair of linear transformations A:V→V and A^∗:V→V that satisfy (i) and (ii) below:

(i)

There exists a basis for V with respect to which the matrix representing A is irreducible tridiagonal and the matrix representing A^∗ is diagonal.

(ii)

There exists a basis for V with respect to which the matrix representing A^∗ is irreducible tridiagonal and the matrix representing A is diagonal.

We call such a pair a Leonard pair on V. In this paper, we characterize the Leonard pairs using the notion of a tail. This notion is borrowed from algebraic graph theory.