Let , and . Subtract the exact fixed-point equation to obtain . Hence convergence for every initial vector is equivalent to . If this holds, it holds after complexification; applying it to a complex eigenvector gives , so . Conversely, the complex Jordan normal form expresses each power as a finite sum of terms from its blocks. Every term tends to zero when all eigenvalues have modulus below one. ThusThe convergence criterion for a stationary iteration needs complex triangularization or Jordan normal form. The paper's assertion that every real matrix is similar to a real upper-triangular matrix is false when nonreal eigenvalues occur; complex triangularization supplies the intended argument. In the Gauss-Seidel method, with split into diagonal, strictly lower and strictly upper parts, .
For , eliminating the ghost values gives the symmetric pentadiagonal matrixAll other off-diagonal entries vanish. The first two equations areand the last two areFor the matrix is , for it is , and for it is because both ghost contributions meet the same unknown. The diagonal entries are positive in every case, so the lower triangular matrix is invertible and the Gauss-Seidel iteration is well defined.
An eigenvalue of makes singular. Let and be the sums of absolute lower and upper entries in row . The row's diagonal-dominance margin isInterior full rows have , , giving margin . Boundary rows have larger margins; for instance the first gives , and the second gives at least . Therefore would make a strictly diagonally dominant matrix, hence nonsingular, a contradiction.
At it is weakly diagonally dominant with strict boundary rows. Its nonzero nearest-neighbour entries make it an irreducibly diagonally dominant matrix. The nonsingularity theorem for that class again contradicts singularity. For the small matrices above all rows are already strict at this value. HenceThere is also a stronger conclusion. For ,including the overlap. Since is positive definite, is a symmetric positive-definite matrix. The Gauss-Seidel convergence from diagonal dominance and positive definiteness theorem consequently gives the stronger bound .