Bounded Dyck paths, bounded alternating sequences, orthogonal polynomials, and reciprocity

The theme of this article is a reciprocity between bounded up-down paths and bounded alternating sequences. Roughly speaking, this ``reciprocity manifests itself by the fact that the extension of the sequence of numbers of paths of length $n$, consisting of diagonal up- and down-steps and being confined to a strip of bounded width, to negative $n$ produces numbers of alternating sequences of integers that are bounded from below and from above. We show that this reciprocity extends to families of non-intersecting bounded up-down paths and certain arrays of alternating sequences which we call alternating tableaux. We provide as well weight