- #1
alchemik
- 2
- 0
Hi all,
Here is this problem that I have been at for some time now: find eigenvalues and corresponding eigenvectors of the following linear mapping on a vector space of real 2 by 2 matrices:
[tex]L(X) = AX - XA[/tex], where A is 2 by 2 symmetric matrix that is not a scalar multiple of identity.
It is clear that 0 is one eigenvalue of the above with an eigenspace consisting of all matrices X that commute with A, I do not know however what its algebraic multiplicity would be, except that it has to be less than 4. To find the other eigenvalues I looked at
[tex]AX - XA = \lambda X [/tex]
a column at a time to obtain a 4 by 4 system.
[tex]Ax_{i} - \sum^{2}_{j = 1}a_{ji}x_{i} = \lambda x_{i} [/tex]
for i = 1, 2, with j indexing the rows of A.
This approach requires me to find eigenvalues and eigenvectors of a 4 by 4 matrix, which may get messy if you have to do it by hand. Do you guys know any other, more efficient way of approaching this problem? I have attempted to use the fact that A can be orthogonally diagonalized in hopes of simplifying the above but with no success.
Thanks.
Here is this problem that I have been at for some time now: find eigenvalues and corresponding eigenvectors of the following linear mapping on a vector space of real 2 by 2 matrices:
[tex]L(X) = AX - XA[/tex], where A is 2 by 2 symmetric matrix that is not a scalar multiple of identity.
It is clear that 0 is one eigenvalue of the above with an eigenspace consisting of all matrices X that commute with A, I do not know however what its algebraic multiplicity would be, except that it has to be less than 4. To find the other eigenvalues I looked at
[tex]AX - XA = \lambda X [/tex]
a column at a time to obtain a 4 by 4 system.
[tex]Ax_{i} - \sum^{2}_{j = 1}a_{ji}x_{i} = \lambda x_{i} [/tex]
for i = 1, 2, with j indexing the rows of A.
This approach requires me to find eigenvalues and eigenvectors of a 4 by 4 matrix, which may get messy if you have to do it by hand. Do you guys know any other, more efficient way of approaching this problem? I have attempted to use the fact that A can be orthogonally diagonalized in hopes of simplifying the above but with no success.
Thanks.