Affine image of a circle 2026-10-20
Let a radius- circle have center , and apply the real affine map . If is invertible, substitute into to obtain the displayed ellipse. Its center is and its semiaxes are times the two singular values of , as follows from the singular value decomposition. A rotation or reflection preserves both semiaxes and hence gives another circle. If has rank one, the image is a segment; rank zero gives one point. This real-plane description also handles maps that stretch real and imaginary coordinates differently and are not holomorphic complex maps.
Backward stability 2026-10-24
A numerical algorithm is backward stable when its computed output is the exact output for input data perturbed by an amount comparable to the arithmetic's round-off error. The allowed input perturbations and their norm must be specified. A bound on backward error gives a forward error bound only after accounting for the problem's condition number. For example, a singular value decomposition with orthonormal computed outer factors is backward stable in the spectral norm if , with machine precision and a modest dimension-dependent constant .
Charged-lepton Yukawa matrix diagonalization Created 2026-10-14 Updated 2026-10-25
A singular value decomposition of the charged-lepton Yukawa matrix uses independent unitary rotations of left- and right-handed leptons. Their gauge-covariant kinetic terms are unchanged because each rotation mixes identical Standard Model representations. After electroweak symmetry breaking, the nonnegative singular values give Dirac masses and diagonal Higgs boson couplings . When the neutrinos are massless, rotating their left-handed fields with the charged partners preserves the diagonal weak charged current.
Split a thin singular value decomposition at , writing and . Suppose has full row rank and the column space of contains that of . With , the identity and the Moore-Penrose pseudoinverse give
Since , submultiplicativity of the operator norm gives the displayed bound: proves . This statement is deterministic. A Gaussian error estimate needs a separate probability bound on the two random factors.
Eckart-Young-Mirsky theorem Created 2026-10-14 Updated 2026-10-25
For a finite matrix with singular values in nonincreasing order, truncating its singular value decomposition after terms minimizes the Frobenius norm error, whose square is the sum of the discarded squared singular values. It also minimizes the operator norm error, which equals the next singular value, or zero if none remain. See Mazeika, Section 4.3: Low rank approximation.
The problem of replacing a matrix by one of lower matrix rank is explicit in Eckart and Young's 1936 paper, [ref]. The publication predates the modern image compression example, showing how a general matrix question can support later applications.
For , with independent and , the multivariate normal distribution of the Bayesian posterior has posterior mean and covariance matrix . The singular value decomposition shows that the variance on a right singular vector of nonzero singular value is , while the variance along the null space is one. Thus, for fixed data, the mean tends to the minimum-norm least-squares solution and the covariance tends to the orthogonal projection onto the null space. Unobserved components retain their prior distribution even as the noise vanishes.
For the dihedral group of order with odd , let and , where and . An invariant tensor defining a bilinear form satisfies . The rotation forces and the reflection forces . Thus the invariant tensor is a multiple of , and a singlet Yukawa interaction gives two equal physical masses by singular value decomposition. Distinct inequivalent doublets admit no such bilinear form, by Schur lemma and their self-duality.
Inverse problem Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
An inverse problem reconstructs an unknown object from observed data and a specified model . The associated forward problem predicts the observations from . In image deblurring, contains sharp pixel values and a matrix mixes neighbouring pixels; in tomography, the observations are integrals through the object. The appeal is that indirect measurements can reveal otherwise inaccessible structure. The difficulty is that the forward problem may erase precisely the distinctions we want to recover.
Consider this completely computable two-pixel image deblurring model:
Each measured pixel retains of its own value and receives of its neighbour's. Adding measurement noise gives , whose direct reconstruction is . The Euclidean norm of the reconstruction error is , ten times the data error . A negative second pixel appears even though both observed pixels are positive.
Despite this wrong reconstruction, its residual of an inverse problem is exactly zero: the predicted data equal the noisy observations. Thus matching the data perfectly does not certify reconstruction accuracy. The relevant question is how large a change in the unknown could hide within the measurement uncertainty. A condition number quantifies that sensitivity for an invertible matrix; the null space identifies changes that no improvement in precision can reveal.
The exact singular value decomposition explains this amplification. With the orthonormal basis
the mean mode survives unchanged while the difference mode shrinks tenfold. Direct inversion multiplies difference-mode measurement noise by ten. The condition number is . The beauty of the singular value decomposition is this separation into independent channels: it identifies which information survives and which needs protection by regularization of an inverse problem.
Low-rank approximation 2026-10-14
A low-rank approximation replaces an matrix by a matrix of matrix rank at most a chosen integer , with , while making an explicitly chosen error norm small. The point is to describe many entries using a few shared patterns: an image compression may retain broad brightness patterns while discarding finer ones. The approximation is useful when the saved storage or computation justifies the lost detail. A small matrix rank alone says nothing about the error.
The compact representation is a sum of outer products, equivalently a product of two thin matrices:
Here are the columns of , and the star denotes the conjugate transpose; over the real numbers use the transpose. The rank bound for a matrix product gives . Conversely, choose a basis of the column space of as the columns of , and put the coordinates of each column of into ; pad with zero columns if the matrix rank is smaller than . Each nonzero outer product is a rank-one matrix: it repeats a single column pattern at different strengths across the columns.
Keeping the two factors stores scalars instead of . This saves space only when . The usual singular value decomposition representation stores scalars because it keeps the singular values separately; absorbing them into one factor removes that extra array. These are representation sizes at equal scalar precision, before file overhead. See Uschmajew and Vandereycken, §9.2: thin factors and their storage, and Illinois CS 357, Low-rank approximation: storing singular vectors and values.
The factors also give without forming the full matrix . Direct evaluation uses scalar multiplications, compared with for a dense matrix applied to a vector. For , the two factors contain scalars rather than , and the same counts describe these multiplication costs. Constructing the factors is a separate cost. Moreover, a low-rank approximation need not be a sparse matrix: the constant matrix whose entries are all has matrix rank despite having no zero entries.
For the standard unweighted problem, write a singular value decomposition with and singular values . Retain the first paired left singular vectors and right singular vectors:
The Eckart-Young-Mirsky theorem says that this same minimizes both of the following error norms over all matrices with matrix rank at most :
where and an empty sum is zero. Here the Frobenius norm is , whereas the operator norm is specifically induced by the Euclidean norm, . The first aggregates errors in all entries; the second bounds the worst output error for a unit vector input. These formulas apply to real and complex matrices. [ref]
For , a relative Frobenius norm tolerance is met precisely when the discarded squared singular values sum to at most . Thus one can choose the smallest suitable before reconstructing the matrix. Many individually small discarded singular values can still have a large combined error. An operator norm tolerance instead tests only the largest discarded singular value, . The two questions can therefore select different ranks.
The following stipulated matrix makes the tradeoff visible. Define four real vectors of length :
The vectors are orthonormal, so this is already a singular value decomposition written as outer products, with positive singular values . All entries lie between and and can be displayed as brightnesses. The first component is uniform brightness, the second distinguishes broad blocks, and the last two supply finer alternating patterns. This is a designed arithmetic example, not measured image data.
Figure 1.
Shared patterns in a stipulated matrix
. The first three panels use the same brightness scale. Rank one retains uniform brightness; rank two adds the broad blocks. The signed residual has its own color scale to expose the discarded patterns. The factors apply a linear map through just intermediate coordinates. Details.
Here has every entry equal to , while has entries within the two diagonal blocks and in the other two blocks. For instance, becomes : its error is . The full residual is , whose Frobenius norm is and whose operator norm is . Since , the relative Frobenius norm error is . Two thin factors use scalars, or if the normalized left singular vectors, right singular vectors, and singular values are stored separately, instead of dense entries.
Figure 2.
Error falls as storage rises for the stipulated matrix
. The exact Frobenius norm and operator norm errors are plotted for . The storage panel counts the two thin factors, or the normalized left singular vectors and right singular vectors plus separate singular values, at equal scalar precision. Lines join discrete rank choices; they do not represent intermediate ranks or measured data. Details.
Retaining three components reduces the Frobenius norm error to while using scalars in two factors. Retaining all four reconstructs exactly but uses scalars, giving no saving in this generic representation; keeping the singular values separately uses . Our particular sign patterns could be encoded more economically, but that would exploit an additional structure beyond the general low-rank approximation. The striking feature is that numerical error and storage can both be read from the decomposition, rather than judged only by how smooth the picture looks.
The constraint is deliberately matrix rank at most . The truncation has . If , the best approximation is itself, with zero error. Requiring matrix rank exactly can destroy attainment: for and , the matrices have matrix rank for , and both error norms equal . Their error has infimum zero, but no rank-two matrix attains it. If , the displayed does have matrix rank exactly and attains the same minimum under either constraint.
Optimality also does not always mean uniqueness. For , the best Frobenius norm approximation is unique when . [ref] A positive tie across the cutoff permits different choices: for and , both and have Frobenius norm error and operator norm error . More generally, is optimal for every real unit vector in the first two coordinate directions. Rotating which tied direction is kept changes the approximation. Repeated singular values entirely inside the retained group do not change its sum of outer products. At the only feasible matrix is zero; at the unique zero-error approximation is , even if some singular values are tied at zero.
A strict gap does not guarantee uniqueness for the operator norm. For and , every with has matrix rank and error , which is optimal. Only minimizes the Frobenius norm, since . An unchanged worst direction can hide extra error in another direction under the operator norm.
Finally, these guarantees concern the stated norms and the sole matrix rank constraint. They do not establish that a discarded pattern is noise or irrelevant to a particular task: the finer patterns in our constructed example were put there intentionally. Adding entrywise weights or restrictions on the factors changes the problem, so the Eckart-Young-Mirsky theorem above does not automatically solve it. For historical context, the original 1936 matrix problem is documented in the existing Eckart-Young-Mirsky theorem section.
Matrix decomposition 2026-10-14
A matrix decomposition expresses a matrix as a matrix product of factors with simpler structure. An LU decomposition uses triangular factors, a QR decomposition uses an orthogonal matrix and a triangular factor, and a singular value decomposition separates input directions, stretching factors and output directions. The factorization is an identity; the chosen structure determines what it helps compute.
For an original two-by-two example,
The outer factors are a lower triangular matrix and an upper triangular matrix, each with unit diagonal as in a unit triangular matrix; the middle factor is a diagonal matrix. Their matrix product is , and the final diagonal entry is the Schur complement of the first entry . This is the scalar version of the factorization under block elimination.
To solve , solve with the three factors in their displayed order from left to right: first the lower triangular factor, then the diagonal factor, then the upper triangular factor. The intermediate vectors are and , giving the concise answer . A new right-hand side uses the same factors. This is why Reusing LU factors for multiple right-hand sides is useful: factorization records work that otherwise would be repeated, while forward substitution and back substitution apply it cheaply.[ref]
Different decompositions reveal different features. A Cholesky decomposition uses positive definiteness of a symmetric matrix, while a singular value decomposition also applies to rectangular matrices and exposes matrix rank. The existence and numerical behaviour of the factors depend on their own hypotheses; for example, an unpivoted LU decomposition can fail when a chosen pivot element is zero even though the matrix is an invertible matrix.
Moore-Penrose inverse Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
The Moore-Penrose inverse extends the useful part of a matrix inverse to rectangular and singular matrices. A linear system may have no exact solution, or may have many. The pseudoinverse resolves both ambiguities: is the minimum-norm least-squares solution. First minimize the Euclidean norm ; among all vectors attaining that minimum, choose the one with smallest Euclidean norm . It does not pretend that inconsistent equations can all be satisfied.
For , its Moore-Penrose inverse is the unique matrix satisfying the four Penrose equations. The singular value decomposition gives a direct construction:
Here are unitary matrices, the star is the conjugate transpose, and is the rectangular diagonal matrix obtained by replacing each nonzero singular value by and leaving zeros at zero. Over the real numbers, use orthogonal matrices and transposes. The pseudoinverse reverses the stretches that can be reversed; it discards output components the original linear map cannot produce and does not invent an input component in its kernel. [ref]
The two products have especially clear meanings:
They are orthogonal projection matrices: selects the producible part of an output, while selects the detectable part of an input. They are generally not identity matrices. For an invertible matrix, both are identities and .
This gives a useful order of operations for least-squares solutions: project the requested output onto the column space, then invert the restriction of from to its column space. Adding a kernel vector leaves the residual unchanged but increases the squared Euclidean norm by the Pythagorean theorem in an inner-product space, because is orthogonal to that kernel. The pseudoinverse therefore provides one canonical answer without hiding either lost information or irreconcilable data.
The name records a history with several contributors. E. H. Moore gave an earlier generalization in 1920; M. H. Pearl's 1966 paper records that work, Arne Bjerhammar's 1951 rediscovery for maximal-rank rectangular matrices, and Roger Penrose's independent 1955 treatment. [ref] Penrose's original paper proves existence and uniqueness from the four Penrose equations for arbitrary complex matrices, including rectangular ones. [ref]
Minimizing gives the displayed equations by differentiation. Equivalently, the regression residual satisfies : it is orthogonal to every column of the design matrix. If has full column rank, the minimizer is unique and the fitted values are the orthogonal projection of onto its column space. A rank-deficient design matrix can give multiple coefficient vectors, while the projected fitted vector is still unique.
For an intercept and one predictor, put and . The equations give and , provided . In the five-point example in linear regression, , , and , giving and .
The normal equations describe the mathematical optimum, but explicitly forming and inverting can amplify numerical problems. A QR decomposition computes the same least-squares solution through orthogonal coordinates; a singular value decomposition also exposes nearly dependent columns. This connects statistical fitting to numerical linear algebra and the choice of a stable algorithm. [ref]
Operator Schmidt rank Created 2026-10-07 Updated 2026-10-20
The operator Schmidt rank of a bipartite linear operator is its shortest expansion as a sum of product linear operators. Expanding in local orthonormal operator bases gives a coefficient matrix; its matrix rank is the operator Schmidt rank, by a singular value decomposition. It is unchanged by invertible local operator-basis changes. A rank-one projector onto a bipartite pure state of Schmidt rank has operator Schmidt rank : its expansion contains all independent products of local matrix units.
Suppose three measurements constrain two unknowns:
The linear system asks for , , and , which are incompatible. A least-squares solution makes a balanced compromise. The matrix has full column rank, so
The fitted output and residual are
Thus the two direct measurements are each overshot by one, and the measured sum is undershot by one. The residual has Euclidean norm and is orthogonal to the column space, the plane in output coordinates .
Figure 1.
The pseudoinverse projects inconsistent data onto the attainable output plane
. For , the closest attainable output is . The segment between them is the residual , perpendicular to the column space. The drawing is an orthonormal two-dimensional slice of output space; the attainable plane intersects this slice in the blue straight line. Details.
For any perturbation , the orthogonality of to gives
Since the kernel of is trivial, every nonzero increases the residual. The least-squares solution is unique in this example. The formula using is convenient for these small exact calculations; an actual numerical computation can use a QR decomposition or singular value decomposition to avoid the extra conditioning cost of the least-squares normal equations. For full column rank, the squared singular values of are the eigenvalues of , so its condition number in the Euclidean norm is . [ref]
The left- and right-chiral components of a charged Standard Model fermion transform in different electroweak group representations. A bare Dirac mass term is therefore not invariant under the full electroweak gauge group. The Higgs doublet supplies the missing transformation properties. With , the gauge-invariant Yukawa interactions are
where each is a flavor-space Yukawa matrix. For example, hypercharges in the down-quark term add to , while those in the up-quark term add to . Thus the Higgs and conjugate Higgs are required in different terms.
After electroweak symmetry breaking, choose unitary gauge with . The fermion mass matrices become
A singular value decomposition defines nonnegative physical tree-level masses. The mismatch is the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix in the weak charged current. The corresponding physical Higgs boson couples diagonally as in the minimal one-doublet theory. This relates its coupling strength to each mass, but the measured Yukawa couplings remain independent input parameters: the minimal theory does not predict their hierarchy.
The minimal renormalizable Standard Model contains no right-handed neutrino, so it has neither a neutrino Dirac Yukawa term nor a gauge-invariant renormalizable left-handed Majorana mass term. Its neutrinos are massless. Observed neutrino oscillations require going beyond that minimal field content or operator set: adding right-handed singlets permits Dirac masses, while the dimension-five Weinberg operator gives a Majorana neutrino mass of order after symmetry breaking. These alternatives should be distinguished from the charged-fermion Yukawa mechanism.
Use the basis of solution for the two doublets, treating the barred left-handed fields as the components to which the printed representation assignment applies. Write and . The doublet contribution to the Yukawa interaction is , so invariant tensors obey
The first equation forces , since their factors are . The second sets . Thus the doublet invariant tensor is . The product of either doublet with has no trivial representation, whereas . Therefore
If instead the unbarred left-handed doublet is chosen to transform by , its barred components transform by ; in that equivalent basis the upper block is . Exchanging the two left components relates these conventions. The singular value decomposition gives the same physical masses in either basis.
Let be the vacuum expectation value in the convention . For canonically normalized fermion kinetic terms, physical charged lepton masses are the nonnegative values in the singular value decomposition of , equivalently the square roots of the eigenvalues of .
In case (i),
The opposite algebraic eigenvalues and of the doublet block do not represent different physical masses. The unavoidable twofold degeneracy conflicts with the three distinct nonzero measured charged lepton masses, for any assignment of the three families.
In case (ii),
One can fit the tau lepton mass by choosing , but the electron and muon remain massless. Thus neither exact dihedral group assignment with this single singlet complex scalar field reproduces the observed spectrum. Additional symmetry-breaking Yukawa interactions or other sources of mass are required; a basis change cannot remove the degeneracy or change the matrix rank.
Use logarithms to base two and set . For a density matrix with eigenvalues , the Von Neumann entropy is
Thus it is the Shannon entropy of the spectrum. In dimension , each term is nonnegative, and entropy vanishes exactly when one eigenvalue is one, namely for a pure state. The Jensen inequality applied to the strictly concave function gives , with equality precisely at the maximally mixed state . Unitary conjugation preserves eigenvalues, so . Product eigenvalues give
The finite-dimensional entropy is continuous because the eigenvalues depend continuously on the matrix and is continuous also at zero.
Define the partial trace over by choosing an orthonormal basis and setting
Equivalently it is uniquely characterized by for every operator on . This identity proves basis independence. Define similarly, with . Hermiticity is preserved by the displayed sum. For each ,
Taking the trace in a product orthonormal basis gives , and the same proof works for . Thus both reductions are density matrices. This is the partial trace positivity from product vectors argument.
For a bipartite pure state , expand in a product orthonormal basis with coefficient matrix . A singular value decomposition gives the Schmidt decomposition
with orthonormal families on both sides. Taking the two partial traces makes all cross terms vanish:
The spectra may have different numbers of zeros but have identical nonzero eigenvalues. Consequently the reduced entropies coincide:
This common value is the entanglement entropy. In infinite-dimensional trace-class systems the same partial-trace and Schmidt arguments apply, and the equality remains valid with the value allowed; the bound is specifically finite-dimensional.
For completeness, the basic mixing and correlation properties also admit short proofs. Define quantum relative entropy by when supports are included, and by otherwise. Here is its nonnegativity proof without merely citing an operator inequality. Diagonalize with eigenvalues , and let be the squared overlaps of their eigenbases. Both row and column sums of are one. The scalar inequality , with zero cases taken by limits, gives
Equality forces on every nonzero overlap, hence . For , expanding the trace definition yields
which proves Concavity of Von Neumann entropy.
The complementary entropy bounds for a quantum mixture are
To prove the upper bound, write the spectral pure-state decompositions of the as one ensemble with weights . Form the column matrix with columns . Its two Gram operators have the same nonzero spectrum: one is , and the other, , has diagonal . Relative entropy against gives . Since and , the bound follows. Zero-weight columns are omitted.
Finally the support of is contained in . Indeed, a vector in a marginal kernel gives a sum of nonnegative product-vector expectations equal to zero; positivity forces the corresponding product vectors into the kernel of . The operator identity on this support and the partial-trace identities give
This proves Subadditivity of Von Neumann entropy, with equality exactly for a product state. Purify by adjoining a third system, using its spectral decomposition. Equality of pure-state marginal entropies gives and . Subadditivity on systems then gives ; swapping gives the Araki–Lieb inequality . These finite-dimensional proofs establish the usual basic entropy bounds, rather than attributing all mixed-state behavior to pure-state Schmidt decompositions.
Principal component analysis replaces correlated measurements by orthogonal linear coordinates ordered by their variance. For centered observations collected in an matrix , write the sample covariance matrix as . A unit loading vector gives score vector with sample variance . The Rayleigh quotient is maximized by a unit eigenvector of for its largest eigenvalue.
The subsequent principal components maximize the same quadratic form subject to orthogonality to the earlier loading vectors. By the spectral theorem, if with descending eigenvalues, the scores have diagonal covariance . Their fractions of explained variance are . Repeated eigenvalues identify an eigenspace rather than a unique axis.
Keeping the first principal components gives the rank- reconstruction . Its squared reconstruction error is
For any rank- orthogonal projection , retained variance is . The weights lie in and sum to , so this is at most the sum of the largest eigenvalues. Projecting onto any candidate reconstruction subspace is its best least-squares reconstruction; this proves the minimum-error property and agrees with the singular value decomposition. Thus PCA finds the linear subspace preserving the greatest variance, equivalently minimizing squared reconstruction error. The upper-left sketch shows the first axis aligned with the elongated cloud; the second is perpendicular. A scree plot and substantive interpretability help choose .
Figure 1.
Original sketches of principal components, classical scaling, hierarchical clustering and multivariate mean comparison
. Details.
These methods depend on measurement scale. A variable measured in large numerical units can dominate covariance-based principal component analysis; standardizing variables gives principal component analysis on a correlation matrix. Scores summarize patterns, but the method neither establishes causation nor guarantees that the largest-variance directions best predict a separate response.
Use and . For each generation , the leptons are
Both are color singlets. The conjugate antilepton fields transform in the conjugate representations and have opposite hypercharge; they are already included by the conjugate fields in the Lagrangian. The two components of have electric charges , and has charge . There is no right-handed neutrino representation in this field content. These assignments use the electroweak representation and hypercharge table in the same hypercharge normalization as the scalar doublet.
For a doublet of hypercharge , define
The term is absent for a singlet. Under the local transformation , the gauge fields transform so that . Consequently the required gauge-covariant kinetic terms are
The fields of definite chirality are defined with . Since has hypercharge , the Yukawa interaction
is invariant: its hypercharges add to zero, and contracts the two doublet indices. A bare charged-lepton mass violates these assignments. No renormalizable neutrino Yukawa term is available without a right-handed neutrino. A gauge-invariant scalar potential depending on can select the nonzero vacuum, without altering these kinetic and Yukawa constructions.
There is an explicit local unitary gauge transformation whenever :
Thus, with the real field ,
This proves the polar coordinates for the electroweak Higgs doublet constructively. The gauge choice is local about the nonzero vacuum; it need not be nonsingular at zeros of the doublet.
The three identical-generation kinetic terms permit unitary flavor changes. A singular value decomposition gives with . Rotate both components of each left doublet together, and the right singlets independently. In this basis,
The left/right cross terms combine into this Dirac mass. Since the neutrinos have no mass matrix, their simultaneous left rotation preserves a diagonal charged current. This is charged-lepton Yukawa matrix diagonalization; the neutrinos remain massless in the stated renormalizable model.
The scalar kinetic term gives
Introduce and . The combinations , , and therefore diagonalize the quadratic terms:
The factor applies to the real neutral field, not to the complex charged field. The massless photon corresponds to the unbroken generator , which annihilates the vacuum. This gives the electroweak doublet gauge-boson mass matrix and its diagonal spectrum.