Linear Algebra

Training Camp for the IMC 2013 22 May Topics to learn / recall
There will be a lot of small exercises to solve on spot. Hopefully the audience will participate actively. Well photograph the whiteboard with solutions. Vector space and its dual space. A basis and a dual basis. A linear transformation and the dual transformation. Why do the space and its dual have the same dimension? Are they isomorphic? What if the space is innitely dimensional? Inner product spaces and their dual spaces. Inner product spaces over real and complex numbers. Gram determinant. Orthogonal (unitary), symmetric (Hermitian), and anti-symmetric operators and their eigenvalues. Canonical forms, eigenvalues, and determinants of symmetric, anti-symmetric, orthogonal, unitary operators.

More exercises
Besides, well try to solve some more problems some with the help of the instructor, some independently, some leave as homework. Problem 1 Let V be an n-dimensional vector space over a eld F and let l : V F be a linear function (an element of the dual space V ). Prove that there exists a basis e1 , . . . , en of V such that l ( x ) = x1 for all x V , where x1 is the rst coordinate of an vector x with respect to the basis e1 , . . . , e n .

Problem 2 Let V be a vector space (probably, innite-dimensional) and let f , g V be linear functions. Assume that f ( x ) g( x ) = 0 for all x V . Prove that either f = 0 or g = 0. Problem 3 Let V be a vector space (probably, innite-dimensional) and let b( x, y) be a symmetric bilinear form. Assume that b( x, y) = f ( x ) g(y), where f , g V . Prove that there is a linear function h V and a scalar such that b( x, y) = h( x )h(y). Problem 4 Let V be an n-dimensional vector space and let b( x, y) be a bilinear form on V . Prove that the rank of the form b( x, y) is 1 if and only if there is a basis where the form is b( x, y) = x1 y1 if its symmetric or b( x, y) = x1 y2 if it is not symmetric. Problem 5 Let V be an inner product space (real or complex) and let a1 , . . . , ak V . Prove that 0 g ( a1 , . . . , a k ) a1
2

. . . an

where it g( a1 , . . . , ak ) is the Gram determinant. Besides, show that g( a1 , . . . , ak ) = 0 if and only if the vectors are linearly independent and that g( a1 , . . . , ak ) = a1 2 . . . an 2 if and only if the vectors are orthogonal (or one of them is 0). Problem 6 Prove that any n n symmetric real matrix with positive leading principal minors is the Gram matrix of some vectors e1 , . . . , en of the n-dimensional Euclidean space. Problem 7 Find a necessary and sufcient condition for (n 2 ) nonnegative real numbers to be pairwise distances of some vectors x1 , . . . , xn in the n-dimensional Euclidean space.

Problem 8 Prove that a projection of a real inner product space V onto a subspace L1 parallel to a subspace L2 is a self-adjoint linear operator if and only if L1 is orthogonal to L2 . Problem 9 Let V be a complex inner product space and let T : V V be a linear operator. Consider the following three properties: T is unitary. T is self-adjoint. T is an involution (which means T 2 = Id). Prove that if T satises any two of these three properties, then it satises the third one too. Describe all types of operators satisfying these three properties. Problem 10 Consider the matrix space Mnn (C) and lets introduce the inner product on it by X , Y = tr( XY ) = Prove that (a). The left multiplication with a xed matrix A is a linear operator on Mn n ( C ) . (b). The norm of any unitary matrix is n. (c). The adjoint of the left multiplication with A is the left multiplication with A . (d). The left multiplications with a unitary matrix U is a unitary operator on Mnn (C). (e). The left multiplication with a Hermitian matrix H is a self-adjoint operator on Mnn (C). 3

i , j =1

ij . xij y

(f). The left multiplication with a skew-Hermitian matrix S is an antisymmetric operator on Mnn (C). Problem 11 Let V be a nite-dimensional real or complex inner product space and let T , U : V V be self-adjoint operators. Prove that TU = UT if and only if there exists an orthonormal basis of V whose elements are eigenvectors of both T and U . Problem 12 Let V be a nite-dimensional complex inner product space. Prove that every nondegenerate linear operator T : V V can be expressed as T = AU , where A : V V is a self-adjoint linear operator with all positive eigenvalues and U is a unitary linear operator.