Rational Approximation to x n II

Introduction. In 1858 Chebyshev showed that xn+l can be approximated uniformly on [–1, 1] by polynomials of degree at most n with an error 2–n. Let 0 ≦ σ ≦ (n + l)tan2(π/2n + 2). In 1868 Zolotarev established that x n + 1 σx n can be approximated uniformly on [ –1, 1] by polynomials of degree at most (n – 1) with an error 2–n(l + σ/n + l)n+1. It is interesting to note that for the case σ = 0, Zolotarev's result includes Chebyshev's result. Achieser ([1], p. 279) proved the following analogue for rational approximation. Let a0 ≠ 0, a 1, a 2, a 3, …, an be any given real numbers. Then for every N > n, where λ is numerically the smallest root of the polynomial with