6: Spectral Theory
( \newcommand{\kernel}{\mathrm{null}\,}\)
- 6.1: Eigenvalues and Eigenvectors of a Matrix
- Spectral Theory refers to the study of eigenvalues and eigenvectors of a matrix. It is of fundamental importance in many areas and is the subject of our study for this chapter.
- 6.2: Diagonalization
- When a matrix is similar to a diagonal matrix, the matrix is said to be diagonalizable.
- 6.3: Applications of Spectral Theory
- Suppose we have a matrix A and we want to find A50 . One could try to multiply A with itself 50 times, but this is computationally extremely intensive (try it!). However diagonalization allows us to compute high powers of a matrix relatively easily.