Laguerre differential operator on polynomials

On polynomials with weighted inner productthe operatoris self-adjoint because $e^{-x}Lf=(x{e}^{-x}{f}^{\prime }{)}^{\prime }$. Its eigenvalues on polynomials of degree at most $n$ are $0,-1,\dots ,-n$; its eigenvectors are scalar multiples of the Laguerre polynomials.

The generalized Laguerre polynomial $L_n^{(\alpha )}$ is orthogonal on $[0,\infty )$ for the weight $x^{\alpha }{e}^{-x}$ when $\alpha >-1$.

A Rodrigues formula constructs an orthogonal polynomial by differentiating a weight multiplied by a power. For generalized Laguerre polynomials,