Trigonometric polynomials with many real zeros

This is a contribution to the theory of “incomplete trigonometric polynomials”T _n , but mainly for the case when their zeros are not concentrated at just one point, but are distributed in some intervalI whose length is not too large. We begin with the simple theorem that if ∥T _n ∥ ≤ 1 and ifT _n has ≥θn, 0<θ< 2, zeros at 0, thenT _n (t) must be small on the interval |t|<2 arcsin (θ/2). There are similar but more complicated and more difficult to prove results whenT _n has ≥θn zeros onI. These results have the following application: IfT _n →f a.e., and if ∥T _n >∥_∞<-1, thenf vanishes on a set of the circleT whose measure is controlled by lim sup (N _n /n), whereN _n is the number of zeros ofT _n onT. In turn, this has further applications to series of polynomials, to norms of Lagrange operators, and to Hardy classes.