Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 2 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge 2006 Paper 1 4 ii Solution Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-20
Put and choose an oriented orthonormal basis with third vector . The Levi-Civita symbol term has action , the negative of . Thus this axisymmetric linear map has block formThe transverse eigenvalues are not real. The only real eigenvalue and its eigenvectors are thereforeThe determinants are and , proving that is always invertible, and is invertible exactly when . The complex transverse pair is important for this determinant even though the question asks for real eigenvalues.