Orthogonal polynomials and quadratic extremal problems

The purpose of this paper is to analyse a class of quadratic extremal problems defined on various Hilbert spaces of analytic functions, thereby generalizing an extremal problem on the Dirichlet space which was solved by S.D. Fisher. Each extremal problem considered here is shown to be connected with a system of orthogonal polynomials. The orthogonal polynomials then determine properties of the extremal function, and provide information about the existence of extremals.