Integrable operators and squares of Hankel Matrices

Abstract

In this note, we find sufficient conditions for an operator with kernel of the form $A(x)B(y)-A(x)B(y)/(x-y)$ (which we call a Tracy-Widom type operator) to be the square of a Hankel operator. We consider two contexts: infinite matrices on $\ell^2$, and integral operators on the Hardy space $H^2(\mathbb{T})$. The results can be applied to the discrete Bessel kernel, which is significant in random matrix theory.