Hankel determinants and Jacobi continued fractions for $q$-Euler numbers

Abstract

The $q$-analogs of Bernoulli and Euler numbers were introduced by Carlitz in 1948. Similar to recent results on the Hankel determinants for the $q$-Bernoulli numbers established by Chapoton and Zeng, we perform a parallel analysis for the $q$-Euler numbers. It is shown that the associated orthogonal polynomials for $q$-Euler numbers are given by a specialization of the big $q$-Jacobi polynomials, thereby leading to their corresponding Jacobi continued fraction expressions, which eventually serve as a key to our determinant evaluations.