Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2003/ia/paper-3/8b/a/solution

Using the monic convention for the characteristic polynomial, expand the determinant along the last column:
For the eigenvalue , the equations give and . Thus every corresponding nonzero eigenvector is a nonzero multiple of . For the eigenvalue , the first two equations give and , so every corresponding nonzero eigenvector is a nonzero multiple of . Therefore
These eigenspaces together have dimension , so they cannot provide an eigenvector basis of . The matrix is not diagonalizable; the eigenvalue has algebraic multiplicity but geometric multiplicity .

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