Laguerre functions and representations of su(1,1)

Spectral analysis of a certain doubly infinite Jacobi operator leads to orthogonality relations for confluent hypergeometric functions, which are called Laguerre functions. This doubly infinite Jacobi operator corresponds to the action of a parabolic element of the Lie algebra $\mathfrak{su}(1,1)$. The Clebsch-Gordan coefficients for the tensor product representation of a positive and a negative discrete series representation of $\mathfrak{su}(1,1)$ are determined for the parabolic bases. They turn out to be multiples of Jacobi functions. From the interpretation of Laguerre polynomials and functions as overlap coefficients, we obtain a product formula for the Laguerre polynomials, given by a discontinuous integral over Laguerre functions, Jacobi functions and continuous dual Hahn polynomials.Comment: 19 page

Quantum Analogs of Tensor Product Representations of su(1,1)

We study representations of $U_q(su(1,1))$ that can be considered as quantum analogs of tensor products of irreducible *-representations of the Lie algebra $su(1,1)$. We determine the decomposition of these representations into irreducible *-representations of $U_q(su(1,1))$ by diagonalizing the action of the Casimir operator on suitable subspaces of the representation spaces. This leads to an interpretation of the big $q$-Jacobi polynomials and big $q$-Jacobi functions as quantum analogs of Clebsch-Gordan coefficients