Cofactor 2026-10-14
The cofactor of a matrix entry is the signed determinant of the minor obtained by deleting its row and column. These scalars form the cofactor matrix, and their transpose forms the adjugate matrix. They give row and column expansions of the determinant, including for singular matrices.
Cofactor matrix 2026-10-07
The cofactor matrix consists of the signed minors of a matrix. It is the transpose of the adjugate matrix. The inverse expression applies to invertible matrices; the definition by minors also applies to singular matrices. Cofactors transform oriented hypersurface area vectors in a change of variables formula.
For a regular material constraint , admissible rates of the deformation gradient lie in the kernel of . The difference between the nominal stress and the derivative of the strain energy density annihilates that tangent space by virtual work, so it is a Lagrange multiplier times . For incompressibility, the derivative of the determinant is its cofactor matrix, and the material-first reaction is when .
For a matrix , contraction of with proves the title identity, because . Define
Expansion shows that is the cofactor matrix. Equivalently, the determinant identity gives . Thus for invertible ,
Differentiating the cubic determinant formula gives three equal terms, so . This is the entrywise derivative of the determinant and remains valid for singular through the cofactor expression. The inverse expression requires .
Write and assume that the material constraint is regular, so . Differentiating the constraint shows that admissible rates of the deformation gradient satisfy . The given stress-power identity says that annihilates this tangent hyperplane. Its orthogonal complement is the one-dimensional span of , so a Lagrange multiplier gives the constraint reaction in hyperelastic stress:
The sign of is a convention; the virtual work identity determines no constitutive value for this reaction. Regularity matters: a singular equation describing the same constraint need not have a nonzero gradient.
For incompressibility, take . Differentiating the expression using the Levi-Civita symbol gives
The middle expression is the corresponding entry of the cofactor matrix. Since , the nominal stress is therefore
For the neo-Hookean solid, , so in the material-first convention . The identity matrix satisfies the prescribed dead loading with , proving that the undeformed cube is always an equilibrium.
To obtain the homogeneous tensile bifurcation of a neo-Hookean cube, first seek , with . This has unit determinant. The two distinct diagonal stress equations are and . Eliminating gives
Thus the nontrivial branch is
The function decreases on and increases on , because . Its minimum is . Above this threshold there are two positive roots . For , neither root is one, and the three choices of the exceptional coordinate for each root give six distinct diagonal deformation gradients, in addition to .
At , however, and the three smaller-root matrices coincide with : it would be incorrect to count those as three new deformations. The requested existence of seven distinct homogeneous deformations nevertheless holds even at this value. For any unit vector , put
Its positive eigenvalues are , and its determinant is one. Since is an orthogonal conjugate of the diagonal solution, the same gives . Choose the six directions
Their outer products are distinct, and , so the six are distinct from one another and from . Constant nominal stress satisfies equilibrium and the prescribed surface tractions. Hence seven distinct homogeneous equilibria exist whenever . This is an existence count, not an exhaustive classification: rotated principal axes actually give a continuous family. The conventional seven axis-aligned positive-stretch branches coalesce to four distinct matrices at .
For a complex square matrix, define its determinant by
The cofactor is , where deletes row and column . The adjugate is the transposed cofactor matrix, .
The entry of is . For , expansion along column gives . For , this same sum is the determinant of the matrix obtained by replacing column by column : deleting the replaced column leaves all its cofactors unchanged. The new matrix has two equal columns, so its determinant is zero. Thus
This proof does not assume invertibility and therefore also covers singular matrices.
The literal assumptions suffice for the scalar quadratic fidelity problem. One can avoid regularity of level-set boundaries by moving only a clipped part of the minimizer. We prove the stronger jump-amplitude inequality for total variation denoising:
Comparison with the zero function gives finite energy and hence . Here , and both differences use the same oriented BV traces on a hypersurface. Reversing the normal reverses both differences and leaves the inequality unchanged. Outside , the two traces of agree, so the inequality would read at a jump of . It therefore gives the requested no-new-jumps property of total variation denoising in every dimension.
First use residual-preserving clipping of an ROF minimizer. For an integer , put
The coarea formula for BV functions gives scalar total variation splitting under clipping:
Indeed the levels in contribute to , while the levels outside that interval contribute to . This uses the full signed coarea formula. For any , minimality of and the triangle inequality for the total variation seminorm give
Cancel the tail variation. Thus is a bounded ROF denoising minimizer for . The data may still be unbounded. This is an exact reduction preserving ; it does not truncate the data and then pass to a limit of different reconstructions.
We next prove the jump-amplitude inequality for a bounded ROF minimizer, allowing its data to be unbounded. Fix a coordinate , a nonnegative , and let be the local flow of the smooth vector field . The flow is the identity near the domain boundary, preserves each line parallel to , and satisfies . Write
These maps are diffeomorphisms, with and uniformly.
The useful trace calculation is the BV jump-product limit with one bounded factor. For and ,
The right side is integrable: and only the common jump part of contributes. The same limit holds with both increments replaced by their negative-time increments, still dividing by positive .
Here is why this calculation needs only one bounded factor. By the BV slicing theorem, almost every coordinate slice of and has one-sided representatives. On one such interval let and use its right-continuous representative. Since ,
Fubini's theorem rewrites the slice integral as
At each interior , the inner expression tends to ; if , it is zero. Its absolute value is at most . Dominated convergence against therefore leaves just the measure atoms common to the two slices. The bound is also integrable over the transverse coordinates, by the BV slicing theorem. Integrating the slice jump sums gives the surface integral and its factor . Negative-time increments give the same product, because both slice differences reverse sign. At no point is a uniform bound on across the slices required.
For , use the mixed competitors
The total variation under opposite smooth flows satisfies
To see this for the entire vector Radon measure , the change of variables formula gives
For , the two cofactor matrices expand as , with the same and opposite signs. Their norm expansions on have cancelling linear terms. Integrating proves the estimate, including the absolutely continuous, jump and Cantor parts. The BV transformation formula is also given in Lemma 4.2 on differentiable regularizers; that lemma does not assume bounded data. The total variation seminorm is a convex function, so
Thus minimality forces the sum of the two fidelity changes to have nonnegative limit after division by .
It remains to evaluate that sum without bounding . Put . Exact expansion of the quadratic fidelity, together with change of variables, gives the opposite-flow fidelity identity for quadratic data:
For completeness, the cross-term identity fixing its sign is
The last integral is : , while
Take first, then . Here and the local flow is strongly continuous in . The remaining Jacobian mass term is . This argument avoids multiplying an unbounded fidelity derivative by an uncontrolled derivative measure.
Apply the BV jump-product limit with one bounded factor with and , and use minimality. For every nonnegative and every coordinate ,
Let . These are inequalities for finite signed Radon measures, so arbitrary nonnegative smooth tests imply nonnegativity of their densities. Since at least one coordinate of a unit normal is nonzero,
This proves the bounded-minimizer lemma with arbitrary data.
Finally return to and . At almost every finite approximate jump point of , choose an integer . The BV traces on a hypersurface commute with clipping, so , and there. It is consequently a jump point of , and its inequality is exactly . A countable union over removes all exceptional surface-null sets. Outside , the BV traces on a hypersurface of agree almost everywhere. We conclude
The mechanism is exact scalar coarea splitting, paired smooth-flow variations, a one-bounded-factor BV trace limit, and localization through integer clipping levels. It works in every dimension under the printed hypotheses, without essential boundedness of or and without regularity of their level-set boundaries.
In total variation calibration notation, . Since this divergence is itself in the BV space, the proved inequality equivalently reads
Thus an upward output jump forces the appropriate nonpositive jump of the calibrated divergence. This is a consequence of the variational argument above, with common oriented BV traces on a hypersurface; no curvature of the rectifiable interface or differentiability of its normal is assumed.
The cofactor matrix is . Transpose it to form the adjugate matrix, and divide by the determinant :
Direct matrix multiplication gives , checking all entries.
In Cartesian coordinates a rank- tensor is an array whose components transform under a change of orthonormal axes by one rotation matrix factor per index:
An isotropic tensor has unchanged components under every proper rotation. The Levi-Civita symbol obeys
for , proving rotation invariance of the Levi-Civita symbol. Under an orthogonal transformation of determinant its sign reverses; including such transformations requires the pseudotensor distinction. Here isotropy is with respect to proper rotations.
Contract the determinant identity with . Since , one obtains
Every index on the right is contracted, so the tensor component transformation law leaves no free rotation factor: the determinant is a scalar. Equivalently, gives .
For the matrix inverse, define
This is the cofactor matrix. To verify the inverse formula rather than just recognize it, contract with and use the determinant identity again:
Here the contraction of two Levi-Civita symbols gives . Therefore and, when ,
These are the Levi-Civita formulas for a three-dimensional determinant and inverse.
Now differentiate the cubic determinant formula with respect to the individual entry . The three differentiated factors give equal contributions: exchanging two paired indices changes the sign of both epsilon symbols, leaving their product unchanged. Thus
Substituting the inverse expression proves the entrywise derivative of the determinant:
The cofactor version remains valid for singular matrices; only the inverse version requires invertibility.
For the time-dependent Jacobian matrix, the stated smooth expansion implies
Applying the chain rule and the entrywise determinant derivative gives Jacobi's formula near :
At zero, , so . A Taylor expansion therefore yields
The Jacobian determinant measures local volume change, so this establishes volume preservation to first order. An arbitrary family specified only through its first-order expansion need not preserve volume exactly at higher orders.
For the local flow of a smooth compactly supported vector field and any scalar BV space function , the change of variables formula and polar decomposition of a vector measure give
The two cofactor matrices are uniformly. On , the linear terms in their Euclidean norm expansions cancel. Integration bounds the remainder by . The identity includes all components of the decomposition of a BV derivative; it does not require smoothness of or its jump interfaces.