On the $q$-analogue of Pólya's Theorem

Abstract

We answer a question posed by Michael Aissen in 1979 about the $q$-analogue of a classical theorem of George Pólya (1922) on the algebraicity of (generalized) diagonals of bivariate rational power series. In particular, we prove that the answer to Aissen's question, in which he considers $q$ as a variable, is negative in general. Moreover, we show that when $q$ is a complex number, the answer is positive if and only if $q$ is a root of unity.

To appear in the Electronic Journal of Combinatorics