Finite Gap Jacobi Matrices, II. The Szeg\H{o} Class

Let $\fre\subset\bbR$ be a finite union of disjoint closed intervals. We study measures whose essential support is $\fre$ and whose discrete eigenvalues obey a 1/2-power condition. We show that a Szeg\H{o} condition is equivalent to $$\limsup \f{a_1... a_n}{\ca(\fre)^n}>0$$ (this includes prior results of Widom and Peherstorfer--Yuditskii). Using Remling's extension of the Denisov--Rakhmanov theorem and an analysis of Jost functions, we provide a new proof of Szeg\H{o} asymptotics, including $L^2$ asymptotics on the spectrum. We use heavily the covering map formalism of Sodin--Yuditskii as presented in our first paper in this series.