Gershgorin disc

ID: gershgorin-disc

Gershgorin disc by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-06 Updated 2026-10-14
A row Gershgorin disc of a square matrix is the closed disk in the complex plane with centre and radius . A zero radius gives a single point. The Gershgorin disc theorem places every eigenvalue in the union of these disks. For a Hermitian matrix, the real intervals cut out by the Gershgorin discs bound the eigenvalues, including energy levels when the matrix represents a Hamiltonian operator.
Applying the Gershgorin circle theorem to the transpose gives column Gershgorin discs with the same centres and radii . Since and have the same characteristic polynomial, every eigenvalue lies in the intersection of the row-disc union and the column-disc union. This is an intersection of two unions; one cannot generally replace each row radius by . An isolated row Gershgorin disc contains exactly one eigenvalue by Gershgorin eigenvalue counting.[ref]

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