Lie algebras and recurrence relations I

We study representations of the Heisenberg-Weyl algebra and a variety of Lie algebras, e.g., su(2), related through various aspects of the spectral theory of self-adjoint operators, the theory of orthogonal polynomials, and basic quantum theory. The approach taken here enables extensions from the one-variable case to be made in a natural manner. Extensions to certain infinite-dimensional Lie algebras (continuous tensor products, q-analogs) can be found as well. Particularly, we discuss the relationship between generating functions and representations of Lie algebras, spectral theory for operators that lead to systems of orthogonal polynomials and, importantly, the precise connection between the representation theory of Lie algebras and classical probability distributions is presented via the notions of quantum probability theory. Coincidentally, our theory is closed connected to the study of exponential families with quadratic variance in statistical theory.