Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematical-methods-i-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2021-resit/5/solution

The characteristic polynomial is
Thus the eigenvalues are and . There is no real diagonalization, because a real diagonal matrix would have real eigenvalues. Over the complex numbers, the two distinct eigenvalues give linearly independent eigenvectors, so the matrix is diagonalizable.
For , the first row gives . Choose , giving . Its standard complex norm is ; the conjugate eigenvector belongs to . Hence normalized eigenvectors and a suitable change of basis are
Directly, and , so
Normalization does not assert that these eigenvectors are orthogonal.

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