The boundary Carathéodory-Fejér interpolation problem

Abstract: We give an elementary proof of a solvability criterion for the {\em boundary Carath\'{e}odory-Fej\'{e}r problem}: given a point $x \in \R$ and, a finite set of target values, to construct a function $f$ in the Pick class such that the first few derivatives of $f$ take on the prescribed target values at $x$. We also derive a linear fractional parametrization of the set of solutions of the interpolation problem. The proofs are based on a reduction method due to Julia and Nevanlinna.