Consider the operators on all of or , extending the displayed positive-function formula linearly. Here is the space of continuous functions vanishing at infinity. The multiplier has modulus at most one, so , and multiplication of exponentials gives and . For strong continuity on , choose a compact outside which is small. On the continuous is bounded, making uniform; outside , . For , use pointwise convergence and the dominated convergence theorem with bound . Thus both are contraction semigroups, even when is unbounded.
The generator of a multiplication semigroup is
Indeed pointwise difference quotients converge to . A norm limit therefore forces the displayed domain condition, using an almost-everywhere convergent subsequence for the case. Conversely , so the dominated convergence theorem proves the limit when . In write the error as times , with the value at supplied by continuity. That second factor tends uniformly to zero where is bounded and has modulus at most one; the compact-set and small-tail argument applied to proves uniform convergence. To prove directly that is a closed operator, take and . Pointwise limits in , or a common almost-everywhere convergent subsequence in , give . Thus is in the appropriate generator domain and . In the domain is dense because ; in compactly supported continuous functions are a dense subspace contained in the domain.
A real multiplication operator on its maximal domain is an unbounded self-adjoint operator. One direct verification is to test the adjoint relation against functions supported on . If is in the adjoint operator domain with representing vector , those tests force on each such set, hence . The converse follows by integration. On the sigma-finite measure spaces used below, the spectrum of a real multiplication operator is its essential range; spectral values are detected by unit vectors supported where the multiplier is arbitrarily close to that value, while outside the essential range its reciprocal is a bounded resolvent multiplier.
For the heat semigroup on , take the normalization . The unitary Fourier transform converts it to multiplication by , and converts the semigroup to multiplication by . Consequently
The Sobolev space domain is exactly . The continuous spectrum comes from the full essential range of , not from square-integrable Fourier eigenvectors.
For the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck semigroup on standard Gaussian measure, the normalized Probabilists' Hermite polynomials form an orthonormal basis. The construction below gives and , so the Hermite coefficient map turns it into a real multiplication operator on . Therefore
Finally, the heat semigroup on the whole real line has no positive spectral gap, whereas the standard Ornstein-Uhlenbeck semigroup has gap one. For the first claim, take a nonzero smooth compactly supported and set . Then , but . This disproves a uniform whole-line Poincaré inequality ; one can also choose . Lebesgue measure here is infinite, so it has no normalized probability mean to subtract. For Gaussian measure, the Hermite expansion instead gives the sharp Gaussian Poincaré inequality
Equality holds for affine functions. The identity on the right is interpreted on the energy-form domain, which is larger than the full operator domain.
For a densely defined operator on a complex Hilbert space, unbounded self-adjointness means equality including equality of the operator domains. Symmetry alone asserts only and is insufficient. Use an inner product linear in its first argument. If , symmetry gives
Thus is bounded below. Since is closed, its range is closed; its orthogonal complement is , so the range is also dense and therefore all of . The inverse is bounded by . The nonreal resolvent estimate for a self-adjoint operator proves .
For bounded self-adjoint , its numerical range of an operator and numerical radius are
Every number in is real. If , its distance from that closed set is positive, and . The same bound applies to , so the range is dense as well as closed and has a bounded inverse. Hence the numerical-range spectral enclosure is
The closure is necessary in infinite dimension: the endpoints of the numerical range need not themselves be attained.
Put and , a bounded positive semidefinite operator. Choose unit vectors with . The Cauchy-Schwarz inequality for the positive form implies
Therefore is an approximate eigenvalue. Apply the same argument to , where , to get the other endpoint. This proves the numerical-range endpoint approximate-eigenvalue theorem. Each endpoint is in the spectrum: a bounded inverse would forbid unit vectors with vanishing residual.
If an unbounded self-adjoint operator is positive semidefinite, then for every real , . The range argument above again proves invertibility, excluding negative values from the spectrum. For the converse, suppose . Its resolvent operator is bounded and self-adjoint. The resolvent spectral mapping identity puts : for , the relevant spectral parameter of is , and nonreal values are excluded by self-adjointness. By the endpoint result just proved, . Positive-form Cauchy-Schwarz inequality then gives
For this yields . Thus the spectral positivity criterion for a self-adjoint operator is
This resolvent proof uses the bounded numerical-range result to handle the full unbounded domain.
A counterclockwise planar rotation matrix has the form
To recover this form from preservation of the Euclidean norm, let be the columns of . Applying the norm condition to the two coordinate unit vectors gives . Applying it to their sum gives
so . The columns are an orthonormal basis, and : is an orthogonal matrix.
Write . There are two perpendicular unit vectors available for , namely . The first gives determinant , the second . The positive determinant hypothesis selects the first. A norm-preserving planar map with positive determinant is a rotation.
For the commutation condition, write
Direct matrix multiplication gives
Equality forces and , so, with and ,
If , take and . Otherwise set and choose , . Then
This describes the centralizer of a planar quarter-turn. Its nonzero elements act as a rotation followed by a uniform scaling, just as multiplication by a nonzero complex number does.
For the reality of the eigenvalues, one may initially allow a nonzero complex eigenvector with . Since is real symmetric, it is a Hermitian matrix, and
is real: the numerator equals its own complex conjugate and the denominator is positive. Once is real, a nonzero real or imaginary part of supplies a real eigenvector. We work with the real unit eigenvectors of the problem.
For two such eigenvectors, symmetry gives
Distinct eigenvalues therefore give zero dot product. Together with the prescribed unit lengths,
These vectors form an orthonormal basis of .
Expand a real unit vector as . Then , and its Rayleigh quotient is
Moreover,
Every coefficient on the right is strictly positive, so equality forces for . Equality occurs precisely along the top eigendirection:
To obtain a unit vector in using just , let and denote their first coordinates. If , take
Then and . Hence has first coordinate zero and unit length. If , simply take . In either case the Rayleigh quotient of the constructed vector is
The continuous quadratic form attains its maximum on the compact space , so
For , deletion of the first row and column gives , while . The spectral theorem for real symmetric matrices applied to identifies its largest eigenvalue with this maximum:
Combining the upper bound for every unit vector with the constructed lower bound proves
This is largest-eigenvalue interlacing for a principal submatrix: restricting a quadratic form to a coordinate hyperplane cannot exceed its old maximum, but leaves some direction in the span of the top two eigenvectors.
Choose a maximal subset whose distinct points have Euclidean distance greater than one. The volumetric bound for Euclidean metric nets makes the construction finite: the open Euclidean balls of radius about the points of are disjoint and all lie in , so
Maximality means that is a metric net of radius one on the unit sphere. Thus every has some with . Since both are unit vectors,
Now intersect the corresponding closed half-spaces:
The Cauchy-Schwarz inequality shows that . Conversely, write any nonzero as and choose as above. Then , so . Hence , which also proves boundedness. This convex polytope has at most facets, since redundant inequalities can only reduce their number. It meets the required inclusions with .
Assume the particle masses are fixed and their total mass is positive. The centre of mass and the relative position vectors are
Their weighted sum is zero, so differentiation gives . Expanding the kinetic energy with makes the mixed term vanish:
This kinetic-energy decomposition about the centre of mass separates translation from internal motion without assuming any particular force law.
For the rigid body, its relative velocity is . The cross product identity for a unit vector gives , the squared perpendicular distance to the rotation axis. Hence the moment of inertia of the particle is , and summing the rotational kinetic energy yields
Take the layer depth as the length unit, its thermal diffusion time as the time unit, and its imposed temperature difference as the temperature unit. Then is the velocity field, the pressure after the conductive hydrostatic pressure has been subtracted, the departure from the conductive temperature , the upward unit vector, and the Rayleigh number. Here is the dimensional depth, the kinematic viscosity, the thermal diffusivity and the thermal expansion coefficient. The gradient, divergence and Laplacian act on the dimensionless coordinates. The term in the heat equation is advection of the background gradient, since . Mass density variations enter only the buoyancy term under the Boussinesq approximation; the incompressible flow constraint is .
For fixed, impermeable, stress-free plates, the no-penetration boundary condition, stress-free boundary condition and perfectly conducting thermal boundary condition are
For a nonzero horizontal Fourier mode, incompressibility gives , so the velocity conditions are equivalently on both plates. A uniform horizontal velocity is not fixed by these boundary conditions; take its mean to be zero when discussing the stationary forced pattern.
The printed small-Prandtl-number label does not generally justify these equations. In thermal-time units the full momentum equation contains , where the Prandtl number is . Dropping that term gives infinite-Prandtl-number convection or another explicitly justified Stokes flow approximation. It is not the general limit. For example the horizontal shear , , satisfies the full linear momentum equation and the plate conditions, and persists at fixed as . The printed inertia-free equation would instead require this shear to vanish. The following parts solve the equations actually displayed; applying them at small Prandtl number needs an additional slaving or creeping-flow ordering.
Let be orthonormal unit vectors north, west and upward. A direction of altitude and westward azimuth is
The north celestial pole and the upper equatorial meridian direction are
In the equatorial coordinate system, the same unit vector is . Taking dot products with respectively gives
This is an orthogonal transformation between two bases, so it preserves the length of the direction vector. Recover from both its sine and cosine to keep the correct quadrant. At the zenith, azimuth itself is undefined; the vector equations remain meaningful by continuity. Using the more usual eastward azimuth changes the sign of the second equation.
Suppose such an exists. Orthogonality and unit lengths make
a continuous map into the unit sphere, since its squared norm is one. This is a homotopy from the identity to the antipodal map. Their degrees would coincide, but for even they are respectively and , a contradiction. Thus no such continuous map exists for even . At there is not even a unit vector orthogonal to either point of , so nonexistence holds there as well. This is a sphere form of the Hairy ball theorem.
Decompose into its components parallel and orthogonal to the unit vector . Its nearest point in the hyperplane is the orthogonal component, since the two components' squared distances add. Thus
This is a unique orthogonal projection; for the hyperplane is the singleton zero and the formula still applies.
With , constrained likelihood maximization minimizes . On the unit sphere this is . By the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality its minimizer is
If , every unit vector is a maximum-likelihood estimator; a specified measurable tie-breaking choice makes an estimator defined everywhere. This event has probability zero in the nonsingular normal model, but the optimization still has that exceptional case.
Put . If , take the inner product with the unit vector . Then
by the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality; the case is immediate. This is the triangle inequality for a vector-valued integral.
Equality in the Euclidean argument requires for every : the nonnegative continuous difference has integral zero. Equality in Cauchy-Schwarz inequality then says with . Conversely, if for one fixed and a continuous , then for every norm,
Thus these nonnegative-ray functions, including , are exactly the required functions.
For a proper three-graph colouring , associate the colors with the three roots of unity , viewed as unit vectors in . Define using the real inner product.
This is twice a Gram matrix, so it is a positive semidefinite matrix. Its diagonal is . On every edge, the endpoint colors differ, so their vectors make angle or and . Thus and this are feasible in the second semidefinite program, proving
This is the regular simplex construction of a strict vector coloring.
For an edge , put and . Since , we have .
The random normal has the isotropic Gaussian distribution . Its distribution is invariant under orthogonal transformations; if are linearly independent, its projection onto their plane has a uniformly distributed direction. The signs of its inner products with differ in two sectors of total angle , out of . Thus random hyperplane rounding gives
If , the signs differ with probability one and the same formula holds with . Zero inner products have probability zero, since each is a unit vector.
If the graph has an edge, its corresponding principal block of forces , so the division by used to obtain the Gram matrix is valid. An edgeless graph can instead be colored with one color directly.
Assume the direction vectors are nonzero. The cross product equation is equivalent to
so is parallel to and the locus is the line .
For nonparallel directions, is normal to both lines. Projecting their displacement onto the corresponding unit vector gives the distance between skew lines
If the directions are parallel, the corresponding formula is
For a source point mass at the origin, let , where is an outward unit vector, and let be the source's standard gravitational parameter. Differentiating gives the tidal tensor
where is the Kronecker delta and is the identity matrix. In an orthonormal basis with first axis radial, the tidal tensor is
The radial eigenvalue separates nearby freely falling test particles; the two transverse eigenvalues bring them together. The farther radial test particle falls inward less rapidly, so its acceleration relative to the nearer one points outward. Transverse gravitational accelerations converge toward the source. Thus an initially resting small cloud stretches radially and squeezes in both transverse directions. These are instantaneous relative accelerations; the subsequent shape also depends on initial velocities and the changing tidal tensor along the cloud's free fall.
Outside the source, the matrix trace is . This matches in a region with zero mass density, by the Poisson equation for Newtonian gravity. Zero matrix trace means no leading change of a small initially resting cloud's volume at order , not that each separation stays fixed. Inside matter, the same sign convention gives instead.
Power iteration Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-14
Power iteration finds a dominant eigenvalue and its eigenvector by repeatedly applying a matrix and rescaling the resulting vector. The essential idea is selective amplification: components along different eigenvectors grow at different rates, so one direction can eventually dominate. It is the computational form of the power method and is useful when applying a large sparse matrix to a vector is cheap but computing its whole spectral decomposition is expensive.
For a square matrix over the real numbers or complex numbers , choose a unit vector and repeat
Here is the Euclidean norm. If , stop before division: the current vector is an eigenvector for the zero eigenvalue, and this iteration cannot continue. Otherwise, in exact arithmetic,
Repeated normalization keeps the stored vectors at manageable size without changing their directions; it does not guarantee that an individual multiplication cannot exceed the range of floating-point arithmetic. The dominant eigenvalue means largest modulus, which need not mean largest signed real value.[ref]