On the growth and zeros of polynomials attached to arithmetic functions

In this paper we investigate growth properties and the zero distribution of polynomials attached to arithmetic functions g and h, where g is normalized, of moderate growth, and \(0<h(n) \le h(n+1)\). We put \(P_0^{g,h}(x)=1\) and

$$\begin{aligned} P_n^{g,h}(x) := \frac{x}{h(n)} \sum _{k=1}^{n} g(k) \, P_{n-k}^{g,h}(x). \end{aligned}$$

As an application we obtain the best known result on the domain of the non-vanishing of the Fourier coefficients of powers of the Dedekind \(\eta \)-function. Here, g is the sum of divisors and h the identity function. Kostant’s result on the representation of simple complex Lie algebras and Han’s results on the Nekrasov–Okounkov hook length formula are extended. The polynomials are related to reciprocals of Eisenstein series, Klein’s j-invariant, and Chebyshev polynomials of the second kind.