Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-year-1-of-the-natural-sciences-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2014/paper-1/11/b/solution

The symmetry between the first and third coordinates makes an eigenvector, with eigenvalue . In the remaining invariant plane, write a vector as . Its image is , so the reduced eigenvalue equation has determinant
The corresponding directions have for and for . Normalizing gives
Their squared unnormalized norms are . The pairwise unnormalized dot products are , , and , so these unit eigenvectors are mutually orthogonal. The eigenvalues sum to and have product zero, agreeing with part (a).

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