Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 339 3 c ii Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
For on the unit circle, use the conjugated monomial vectorThen the prescribed diagonal sums givePositive semidefiniteness provesThis is the Gram matrix representation of a trigonometric polynomial. The Hermitian condition also implies , so its values on the unit circle are real. The conjugated monomial vector is required by the source's convention; the unconjugated vector would represent instead.
In particular . If this matrix trace is zero, all nonnegative eigenvalues vanish and , so . A general feasible Gram matrix need not have matrix rank one; the Fejér–Riesz theorem ensures a rank-one representative exists whenever the nonnegative trigonometric polynomial is nonzero.