Direct and inverse polynomial perturbations of hermitian linear functionals

This paper is devoted to the study of direct and inverse (Laurent) polynomial modifications of moment functionals on the unit circle, i.e., associated with hermitian Toeplitz matrices. We present a new approach which allows us to study polynomial modifications of arbitrary degree.The main objective is the characterization of the quasi-definiteness of the functionals involved in the problem in terms of a difference equation relating the corresponding Schur parameters. The results are presented in the general framework of (non-necessarily quasi-definite) hermitian functionals, so that the maximum number of orthogonal polynomials is characterized by the number of consistent steps of an algorithm based on the referred recurrence for the Schur parameters.The non-uniqueness of the inverse problem makes it more interesting than the direct one. Due to this reason, special attention is paid to the inverse modification, showing that different approaches are possible depending on the data about the polynomial modification at hand. These different approaches are translated as different kinds of initial conditions for the related inverse algorithm.Some concrete applications to the study of orthogonal polynomials on the unit circle show the effectiveness of this new approach: an exhaustive and instructive analysis of the functionals coming from a general inverse polynomial perturbation of degree one for the Lebesgue measure; the classification of those pairs of orthogonal polynomials connected by a certain type of linear relation with constant polynomial coefficients; and the determination of those orthogonal polynomials whose associated ones are related to a degree one polynomial modification of the original orthogonality functional.