The Householder-John theorem states that if is Hermitian positive definite and is also Hermitian positive definite, then is invertible and . The associated stationary iteration therefore converges from every starting vector. For designing a method, choose a splitting with easily solved and verify the positive-definiteness condition on ; it is a sufficient certificate and does not require computing every iteration-matrix eigenvalue.
For completeness, put . If for , then , a contradiction. If , then . The case contradicts invertibility of . Taking scalar products and using Hermitian symmetry gives
hence . The usual spectral-radius convergence criterion now proves the stated conclusion.
For the given scheme take the matrix splitting
Since is real symmetric, , and since it is positive definite, every diagonal entry in is positive. Thus
is positive definite exactly for . The theorem applies, and the iteration matrix has spectral radius below one. The unique solution is its fixed point, so . Therefore
The scheme is successive over-relaxation; at it becomes the Gauss-Seidel method.
Choose a matrix splitting with invertible. Then is equivalent to
and the associated stationary iterative method for a linear system is
For the Jacobi method, write with diagonal and strictly lower and upper triangular, and take
Thus
The iteration converges for every initial vector exactly when the spectral radius of its iteration matrix satisfies