Symmetric and skew-symmetric Cayley transforms

ID: symmetric-and-skew-symmetric-cayley-transforms

For a real skew-symmetric matrix , its Cayley transform of a real skew-symmetric matrix with the opposite sign convention has inverse . Since is an orthogonal matrix, symmetry means , or . This forces . Skew-symmetry means , or , which is equivalent to . In that case . Such examples exist in even dimension by taking two-dimensional right-angle rotation matrices in diagonal blocks; in odd real dimension the determinant equation rules them out.

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