Chebyshev polynomials of the second kind via raising operator preserving the orthogonality

It is well known that monic orthogonal polynomial sequences \(\{T_n\}_{n\ge 0}\) and \(\{U_n\}_{n\ge 0}\), the Chebyshev polynomials of the first and second kind, satisfy the relation \(DT_{n+1}=(n+1)U_n\) (\(n\ge 0\)). One can also easily check that the following “inverse” of the mentioned formula holds: \({\mathcal {U}}_{-1}(U_n)=(n+1)T_{n+1}\) (\(n\ge 0\)), where \({\mathcal {U}}_\xi =x(xD+{\mathbb {I}})+\xi D\) with \(\xi \) being an arbitrary nonzero parameter and \({\mathbb {I}}\) representing the identity operator. Note that whereas the first expression involves the operator D which lowers the degree by one, the second one involves \({\mathcal {U}}_\xi \) which raises the degree by one (i.e. it is a “raising operator”). In this paper it is shown that the scaled Chebyshev polynomial sequence \(\{a^{-n}U_n(ax)\}_{n\ge 0}\) where \(a^2=-\xi ^{-1}\), is actually the only monic orthogonal polynomial sequence which is \({\mathcal {U}}_\xi \)-classical (i.e. for which the application of the raising operator \({\mathcal {U}}_\xi \) turns the original sequence into another orthogonal one).