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Let us consider a Hermitian diagonalizable matrix $A \in M_N(\mathbb{C})$. It is known that a similarity transformation by an invertible matrix $P$ does not change the eigenvalues of $A$, that is

$$ Eig (A) = Eig(PAP^{-1}) $$

My question is: what happens when the matrix $P$ is not a squared $N\times N$ matrix, but, let's say, an $N\times M$ matrix? Notice that in this case $P^{-1}$ would be the Moore-Penrose inverse. Does anyone know how to (at least) tackle the problem?

My interest is focused on the largest eigenvalue of $A$ and $PAP^{-1}$: is there any connection between $\max\{Eig(A)\} $ and $\max\{Eig(PAP^{-1})\}$? Or at least a way to formalize this problem or some mathematical tools to adress it?

  • if $A$ is Hermitian, you may look at Cauchy Interlacing. If it is not Hermitian, you need to start by explaining what max means with respect to points in $\mathbb C$ – user8675309 Dec 27 '20 at 20:11
  • Yes, $A$ is Hermitian, I did not specified but now I edited the question. Actually I looked at Cauchy Interlacing, it may be interesting. The problem is that there is no relation between the $A$ and the $P$, which would be a relation between the column and row erased. Maybe I would need to use a $N\times N$ matrix $P$ with null rows? – raskolnikov Dec 27 '20 at 22:17

1 Answers1

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In general, it holds that $AB$ and $BA$ have the same non-zero eigenvalues. Thus, $PAP^{-1} = (PA)P^{-1}$ has the same non-zero eigenvalues as $P^{-1}(PA) = (P^{-1}P)A$.

$J := P^{-1}P$ is the orthogonal projection onto the column-space of $P$. If $P$ has full row-rank, then $J$ is the identity matrix. If $P$ has full column-rank, then $P^{-1} = (P^*P)^{-1}P^*$ and it can be shown that $PAP^{-1}$ has the same rank as $P^{-1}PA$.

With the Cauchy interlacing theorem, we can say a bit more. Let $U$ be a matrix with orthonormal columns (i.e. $U^*U = I$) for which $J = UU^*$. Note that $U$ has size $N \times r$, where $r$ is equal to the rank of $P$. We note that $JA = (UU^*)A$ has the same non-zero eigenvalues as the $r \times r$ matrix $$ U^*AU. $$ $U^*AU$ is a compression of the matrix $A$, so its eigenvalues interlace the eigenvalues of $A$.


Concretely, we can reach the following two conclusions:

If $P$ has full row-rank $M> N$, then each eigenvalue of $A$ is also an eigenvalue of $PAP^{-1}$ and $0$ is necessarily an eigenvalue of $PAP^{-1}$ (regardless of whether $A$ has $0$ as an eigenvalue). If $A$ has at least one non-negative eigenvalue, then $PAP^{-1}$ and $A$ have the same maximal eigenvalue.

If $P$ has full column-rank $N > M$, then the eigenvalues of $PAP^{-1}$ interlace those of $A$. In particular, if $\mu_1 \leq \cdots \leq \mu_M$ are the eigenvalues of $PAP^{-1}$ and $\lambda_1 \leq \cdots \leq \lambda_N$ are the eigenvalues of $A$, then we have $$ \lambda_M \leq \mu_M \leq \lambda_N. $$

Ben Grossmann
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