Hessenberg-Sobolev Matrices and Favard type theorems

We study the relation between certain non-degenerate lower Hessenberg infinite matrices $\mathcal{G}$ and the existence of sequences of orthogonal polynomials with respect to Sobolev inner products. In other words, we extend the well-known Favard theorem for Sobolev orthogonality. We characterize the structure of the matrix $\mathcal{G}$ and the associated matrix of formal moments ${\mathcal{M}}_{\mathcal{G}}$ in terms of certain matrix operators.