Among the two orthogonal matrices from part (d)(i), gives , a rotation matrix through angle . For , the determinant is , so the matrix reverses orientation and is a reflection rather than a rotation:
It is the reflection matrix across the axis.
An orthogonal matrix has orthonormal columns. The first column of has squared norm , so . Orthogonality of the two columns then gives , hence . The second column must have squared norm . Therefore
Both resulting matrices satisfy directly.
The transpose reverses the product order, so the definition is
If and are orthogonal matrices, then and . Hence
Thus is orthogonal. The original PDF includes the transpose of the entire product , which is essential to the expression used here.
The displayed matrix is not orthogonal: its first column has squared Euclidean norm three, whereas every column of an orthogonal matrix must have squared length one.
For the general assertion, put . In the Einstein summation convention, orthogonality gives and . The entries of satisfy
This is exactly , proving that the matrix product is orthogonal. The Kronecker delta contracts the two middle indices without changing the multiplication order of the matrices.
The two prescribed directions have dot product zero. Normalize them to
Their cross product is the perpendicular unit vector . Using these as columns gives
The columns form an orthonormal basis, so and is an orthogonal matrix.
Commuting inverse. Assume is invertible, as required by the displayed inverse. Multiplication gives
Multiply on both sides by to obtain
More generally, a matrix commuting with an invertible matrix also commutes with its inverse.
Orthogonality. For a real skew-symmetric matrix , . If for a real vector , multiply by to obtain . Thus is invertible; the same argument applies to . For the Cayley transform of a real skew-symmetric matrix,
The factors commute by the first result, so
Therefore
Eigenvector mapping. If , then . Consequently
The denominator cannot vanish. In fact the eigenvalues of a real skew-symmetric matrix are purely imaginary: is the negative of its complex conjugate, so . For the corresponding eigenvalue of is , consistent with orthogonality.
Spectrum in three dimensions. Let be any real three-by-three orthogonal matrix. For a complex eigenvector , implies . A real cubic characteristic polynomial has a real root, necessarily or . Any nonreal roots form a complex-conjugate pair of unit modulus. If all three roots are real, two of the three signs agree and can be grouped as a pair with angle zero or . Thus in every case the eigenvalues can be written
Their product is .
Determinant and fixed axis for the Cayley transform. Since ,
so . This determinant argument works in every dimension. In dimension three the preceding spectrum result then guarantees an eigenvector with . Set . The fixed-vector equation says , so and . Hence
This is the axis fixed by the three-dimensional rotation. Equivalently, a real odd-dimensional skew-symmetric matrix has zero determinant, because .
For Cartesian tensors, let be the orthogonal matrix taking old vector components to new ones, . A rank- tensor transforms by one copy of on each index:
Repeated indices are summed according to Einstein notation. In general coordinates a contravariant tensor index instead carries the corresponding Jacobian matrix , and a covariant tensor index carries its inverse; in orthonormal bases of Cartesian axes their component laws coincide with the displayed form.
An isotropic tensor has identical components after every proper orthogonal transformation, so for every with and . Requiring reflection invariance as well is a stronger convention for odd tensor ranks. The Kronecker delta is invariant under all orthogonal transformations, while the Levi-Civita symbol is invariant under proper rotations and acquires a determinant sign under reflections.
A real orthogonal matrix satisfies ; a complex unitary matrix satisfies . Their columns are orthonormal in the corresponding real or complex inner product.
Adopt the convention that a complex inner product is linear in its second argument, conjugate symmetric, and positive definite: , with equality exactly when . Conjugate symmetry and second-argument linearity then imply antilinearity in the first:
For the specified real symmetric matrix use . Its upper block is the outer product , so it has one zero eigenvalue and one eigenvalue . A complete orthonormal eigenbasis is
If , the last two eigenvalues coincide and their eigenspace is the span of ; every nonzero vector in that span is an eigenvector. Since , the zero eigenspace remains one-dimensional.
A unitary matrix satisfies over the complex numbers; a real orthogonal matrix satisfies . Their inverses are their conjugate transposes and transposes, respectively.
With , the coordinate has eigenvalue . In the plane, the traceless symmetric two-by-two matrix has eigenvalues , where . If , choose with and . Then an orthonormal eigenbasis is
If equals or , the corresponding eigenspace is the span of the two listed vectors with that eigenvalue. If , then , the plane is the zero eigenspace, and retains eigenvalue ; if also , every vector belongs to the zero eigenspace. This includes the degenerate cases that a division by would miss.
For the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality, take and remove the orthogonal projection of along . Positivity of the squared norm gives
Multiplication by and square roots prove ; the case is immediate. Equality means linear dependence. Therefore
Taking the nonnegative square root proves the triangle inequality.
A complex matrix is diagonalizable exactly when it has a basis of three linearly independent eigenvectors. If all its eigenvalues are one, a diagonalization would have and hence . Therefore the specified matrix, which is not a scalar identity matrix, is not diagonalizable.
For the displayed real symmetric matrix, choose the orthogonal matrix
Its columns form an orthonormal eigenbasis, and
In the orthogonal coordinates , , the quadric surface has equation . It is a prolate spheroid, with long semiaxis one in direction and two equal short semiaxes . The figure gives its principal-axis sketch.
Figure 1.
The diagonalized quadric is a prolate spheroid with semiaxes one and one over the square root of three
. Details.
A diagonalizable matrix can certainly have exactly two distinct eigenvalues: is already diagonal and has an eigenbasis despite its repeated eigenvalue.
Let be the orthogonal matrix taking old components to new ones, so . With repeated indices summed, the tensor component transformation law is
An isotropic tensor has the same components after every proper rotation. Since , the Kronecker delta is invariant. Applying this identity to each factor shows that and every linear combination are invariant as well.
To show that an isotropic second-rank tensor must be scalar, start with any matrix , without assuming symmetry. Invariance under quarter-turns about axes 1 and 2 implies invariance under their squares, the half-turns
The first forces to vanish. The second also forces to vanish. The matrix is therefore diagonal. A quarter-turn about axis 1 interchanges its 22 and 33 entries; one about axis 2 interchanges its 11 and 33 entries. All three must agree, giving .
A rotation preserves the ball , and the volume element. Changing integration variables by that rotation shows that and are isotropic tensors. Write . Taking its tensor contraction gives
so . Every permutation of the indices of leaves its integrand unchanged. Its complete symmetry therefore makes all three isotropic coefficients equal, say :
Double contraction gives . Thus the isotropic fourth moment of a ball and its radial contraction are
Put , so that . Contract with the prescribed unit vector twice:
This has the spectrum of a scalar matrix plus a rank-one projector. In the direction , the outer product acts as the identity; on the plane perpendicular to , it acts as zero. Therefore
Any nonzero multiple of is a parallel eigenvector, and any nonzero vector in the perpendicular plane is a transverse eigenvector. The transverse eigenvalue has multiplicity two; an orthonormal basis of that plane completes a set of principal axes.
Collect the paired orthonormal bases from part (iv), followed by an orthonormal basis of . The matrix of these columns is an orthogonal matrix, and
Indeed, each pair obeys , , and all kernel vectors are annihilated. This proves the real block form of a skew-symmetric matrix directly, including repeated block parameters. In particular its rank is , always even.
The spectral theorem for a real symmetric matrix gives real eigenvalues and an orthonormal eigenbasis. Compute the roots of , find a basis for each eigenspace, and orthonormalize within any repeated-eigenvalue eigenspace. Eigenvectors belonging to distinct eigenvalues are already orthogonal: if and , symmetry gives .
Putting the normalized basis vectors in the columns of an orthogonal matrix yields
For repeated eigenvalues, the choice of axes inside their eigenspace is not unique.
Act on vectors in the plane of the regular hexagon using its actual rotations and reflections. Choose the first reflection axis as the horizontal axis. A faithful representation is generated by
They are real orthogonal matrices obeying , and . Hence they reproduce the group relations. Since ,
This is reflection in the line at angle . More generally . The six rotation matrices are distinct, as are the six reflection matrices; their determinant signs distinguish the two sets. Thus no two group elements have the same matrix, proving faithfulness rather than merely the representation property.
Preserving Cartesian lengths and Euclidean inner products requires an orthogonal matrix:
Its determinant is . Relative to an originally right-handed frame, gives a right-handed frame and a left-handed frame. More generally, this sign determines whether the two frames have the same or opposite orientation.
The tensor component transformation law is
For a tensor field, the components are compared at the same physical point, whose coordinates satisfy .
Let be the real orthogonal matrix. If for a nonzero complex eigenvector, then preservation of the complex Euclidean norm gives
so . Its characteristic polynomial has real coefficients, hence nonreal eigenvalues occur in conjugate pairs. Such a pair is , and the remaining real eigenvalue is or .
If all three eigenvalues are real, each is ; two have the same sign and can be paired as with or . Thus in every case the spectrum has the form
Their product shows that .
A real symmetric matrix has a real orthonormal eigenbasis. Put those eigenvectors into an orthogonal matrix , so . With the change of coordinates , or ,
Thus the coefficients are the eigenvalues and the new coordinate directions are the eigenvectors. This orthogonal diagonalization preserves Euclidean lengths and angles while removing cross terms from the quadratic form.
The columns of are an orthonormal basis, since and the first two columns have zero dot product. Thus : it is an orthogonal matrix. Consequently
and hence . This is the preservation of the Euclidean norm by a rotation matrix.
Both factors and their product are real, so the Hermitian conjugate equals the transpose. Part (i) therefore gives
Hence A real orthogonal matrix is always a unitary matrix.
A product of orthogonal matrices is orthogonal. In fact,
Thus Its determinant is also one, since each factor has determinant one, so it remains a proper rotation matrix.