Szegö via Jacobi

At present there exist numerous different approaches to results on Toeplitz determinants of the type of Szegö’s strong limit theorem. The intention of this paper is to show that Jacobi’s theorem on the minors of the inverse matrix remains one of the most comfortable tools for tackling the matter. We repeat a known proof of the Borodin–Okounkov formula and thus of the strong Szegö limit theorem that is based on Jacobi’s theorem. We then use Jacobi’s theorem to derive exact and asymptotic formulas for Toeplitz determinants generated by functions with nonzero winding number. This derivation is new and completely elementary.