Jost Asymptotics for Matrix Orthogonal Polynomials on the Real Line

We obtain matrix-valued Jost asymptotics for block Jacobi matrices under an L ¹-type condition on Jacobi coefficients, and give a necessary and sufficient condition for an analytic matrix-valued function to be the Jost function of a block Jacobi matrix with exponentially converging parameters. This establishes the matrix-valued analogue of Damanik and Simon (Int. Math. Res. Not. 32:19396, 2006). The above results allow us to fully characterize the Weyl?CTitchmarsh m-functions of Jacobi matrices with exponentially converging parameters.