Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2006 / ia / Paper 3 / 1D (Algebra and Geometry)

Let $c=1/\sqrt{2}$. A concrete real matrix isIts first coordinate has eigenvalue $-1$. The lower block has characteristic polynomial $(\lambda -c{)}^2+c^2$, whose roots are $c\pm ic=(1\pm i)/\sqrt{2}$. Thus this example has all three required eigenvalues. It is also an orthogonal matrix, but orthogonality is not forced by its spectrum, as the second part shows.

True. All three eigenvalues are distinct in $\mathbb{C}$, so their nonzero eigenvectors are linearly independent. Here is a direct proof of that assertion. If $a_1{v}_1+a_2{v}_2+a_3{v}_3=0$, apply $(A-{\lambda }_{2}I)(A-{\lambda }_{3}I)$ to obtainDistinctness makes both scalar factors nonzero, hence $a_1=0$. Applying the analogous products gives $a_2=a_3=0$. The three eigenvectors therefore form a basis of ${\mathbb{C}}^3$. Taking them as the columns of $P$ givesThis proves that every such matrix is a diagonalizable matrix over $\mathbb{C}$, rather than merely showing it for the example.

False. Consider the real matrixIt is block upper triangular, so its characteristic polynomial is the same as that of $A_0$ and it has the required eigenvalues. Its second column, however, has squared Euclidean norm $1+c^2+c^2=2$, whereas every column of an orthogonal matrix has norm one. ThusUnit-modulus eigenvalues alone do not imply orthogonality; they do not control the geometry of the eigenvectors.

False; in fact no matrix with this spectrum is diagonalizable over $\mathbb{R}$. If a real invertible $P$ gave $P^{-1}AP=D$ with $D$ a real diagonal matrix, all eigenvalues of $A$ would be the real diagonal entries of $D$. But two of the required eigenvalues have nonzero imaginary parts. This contradiction provesThe real block form in the initial example is consistent with this: a two-dimensional rotation block is not a real diagonalization.