Soft Riemann-Hilbert problems and planar orthogonal polynomials

We will discuss the solution of a problem, raised by Its and Takhtajan in their 2007 arXiv preprint. The solution provides a substantially simplified approach to the asymptotics of the orthogonal polynomials for exponentially varying weights in the plane studied by Hedenmalm and Wennman (Acta Math, to appear).