A VARIATION ON SELBERG'S APPROXIMATION PROBLEM

Let alpha is an element of C in the upper half-plane and let I be an interval. We construct an analogue of Selberg's majorant of the characteristic function of I that vanishes at the point alpha. The construction is based on the solution to an extremal problem with positivity and interpolation constraints. Moreover, the passage from the auxiliary extremal problem to the construction of Selberg's function with vanishing is easily adapted to provide analogous "majorants with vanishing" for any Beurling-Selberg majorant.