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A short proof of Mathar's 2013 recurrence conjecture for the Meixner sequence A214615

Combinatorics 2026-05-07 v2

Abstract

For the OEIS sequence A214615, defined by a(n)=Mn(1)a(n) = M_{n}(1) where MnM_{n} is the nn-th Meixner polynomial satisfying Mn+1(x)=xMn(x)n2Mn1(x)M_{n+1}(x) = x\,M_{n}(x) - n^{2}\,M_{n-1}(x), R.~J.~Mathar contributed on 6~March 2013 the conjectured order-2 P-recursive recurrence a(n)a(n1)+(n1)2a(n2)=0a(n) - a(n-1) + (n-1)^{2}\,a(n-2) = 0 for n2n \ge 2. We give a one-page proof. The exponential generating function F(t)=exp ⁣(arctant)/1+t2F(t) = \exp\!\bigl(\arctan t\bigr)/\sqrt{1+t^{2}} satisfies the first-order linear ODE (1+t2)F(t)=(1t)F(t)(1+t^{2})\,F'(t) = (1-t)\,F(t), and Mathar's recurrence then falls out by reading off the coefficient of tn/n!t^{n}/n!. Both steps are short. The supplementary archive includes a SymPy script that checks the ODE identically and the recurrence numerically up to n=500n = 500.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2605.03170,
  title  = {A short proof of Mathar's 2013 recurrence conjecture for the Meixner sequence A214615},
  author = {Tong Niu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.03170},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

v2: corrected author contact email address (no math content changes)