Wigner Semicircle Distribution - General Properties

General Properties

The Chebyshev polynomials of the second kind are orthogonal polynomials with respect to the Wigner semicircle distribution.

For positive integers n, the 2n-th moment of this distribution is

where X is any random variable with this distribution and Cn is the nth Catalan number

so that the moments are the Catalan numbers if R = 2. (Because of symmetry, all of the odd-order moments are zero.)

Making the substitution into the defining equation for the moment generating function it can be seen that:

which can be solved (see Abramowitz and Stegun §9.6.18) to yield:

where is the modified Bessel function. Similarly, the characteristic function is given by:

where is the Bessel function. (See Abramowitz and Stegun §9.1.20), noting that the corresponding integral involving is zero.)

In the limit of approaching zero, the Wigner semicircle distribution becomes a Dirac delta function.

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