A note on the singular value decomposition of (skew-)involutory and (skew-)coninvolutory matrices
Heike Fa{\ss}bender, Martin Halwa{\ss}

TL;DR
This paper explores the singular value decomposition of involutory and (skew-)coninvolutory matrices, revealing relationships between their singular values, eigenvalues, and coneigenvalues, and reformulating SVD as eigendecomposition.
Contribution
It introduces a novel reformulation of SVD for involutory matrices as eigendecomposition, highlighting the connection between singular values and eigenvalues for these matrices.
Findings
Singular values of involutory matrices come in reciprocal pairs.
SVD can be reformulated as eigendecomposition for involutory matrices.
Similar properties hold for (skew-)coninvolutory matrices.
Abstract
The singular values of an involutory matrix appear in pairs while the singular values may appear in pairs or by themselves. The left and right singular vectors of pairs of singular values are closely connected. This link is used to reformulate the singular value decomposition (SVD) of an involutory matrix as an eigendecomposition. This displays an interesting relation between the singular values of an involutory matrix and its eigenvalues. Similar observations hold for the SVD, the singular values and the coneigenvalues of (skew-)coninvolutory matrices.
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Taxonomy
TopicsMatrix Theory and Algorithms · graph theory and CDMA systems · Mathematics and Applications
On the singular value decomposition of (skew-)involutory and (skew-)coninvolutory matrices
Heike Faßbender
Institut Computational Mathematics/ AG Numerik, TU Braunschweig, Universitätsplatz 2, 38106 Braunschweig, Germany
Martin Halwaß
Kampstraße 7, 17121 Loitz, Germany
Zusammenfassung
The singular values of an involutory matrix appear in pairs Their left and right singular vectors are closely connected. The case of singular values is discussed in detail. These singular values may appear in pairs with closely connected left and right singular vectors or by themselves. The link between the left and right singular vectors is used to reformulate the singular value decomposition (SVD) of an involutory matrix as an eigendecomposition. This displays an interesting relation between the singular values of an involutory matrix and its eigenvalues. Similar observations hold for the SVD, the singular values and the coneigenvalues of (skew-)coninvolutory matrices.
keywords:
singular value decomposition , (skew-)involutory matrix , (skew-)coninvolutory , consimilarity
MSC:
15A23 , 65F99
1 Introduction
Inspired by the work [7] on the singular values of involutory matrices some more insight into the singular value decomposition (SVD) of involutory matrices is derived. For any matrix there exists a singular value decomposition (SVD), that is, a decomposition of the form
[TABLE]
where are unitary matrices and is a diagonal matrix with non-negative real numbers on the diagonal. The diagonal entries of are the singular values of Usually, they are ordered such that The number of nonzero singular values of is the same as the rank of Thus, a nonsingular matrix has positive singular values. The columns of and the columns of are the left singular vectors and right singular vectors of respectively. From (1.1) we have Any triplet with is called a singular triplet of In case and can be chosen to be real and orthogonal.
While the singular values are unique, in general, the singular vectors are not. The nonuniqueness of the singular vectors mainly depends on the multiplicities of the singular values. For simplicity, assume that is nonsingular. Let denote the distinct singular values of with respective multiplicities Let be a given singular value decomposition with Here denotes as usual the identity matrix. Then
[TABLE]
with unitary matrices yield another SVD of This describes all possible SVDs of see, e.g., [4, Theorem 3.1.1’] or [8, Theorem 4.28]. In case the corresponding left and right singular vector are unique up to multiplication with some where For more information on the SVD see, e.g. [2, 4, 8].
A matrix with or equivalently, is called an involutory matrix. Thus, for any involutory matrix and its inverse have the same SVD and hence, the same (positive) singular values. Let be the usual SVD of with the diagonal of ordered by magnitude, Noting that an SVD of is given by and that the diagonal elements of are ordered by magnitude, we conclude that That is, the singular values of an involutory matrix are either or pairs where This has already been observed in [7] (see Theorem 1 for a quote of the findings). Here we will describe the SVD for involutory matrices in detail. In particular, we will note a close relation between the left and right singular vectors of pairs of singular values: if is a singular triplet, then so is We will observe that some of the singular values may also appear in such pairs. That is, if is a singular triplet, then so is Other singular values may appear as a single singular triplet, that is These observations allow to express as for a real elementary orthogonal matrix With this the SVD of reads Taking a closer look at the real matrix we will see that is an involutory matrix just as All relevant information concerning the singular values and the eigenvalues of can be read off of Some of these findings also follow from [6, Theorem 7.2], see Section 2.
As any skew-involutory matrix can be expressed as with an involutory matrix the results for involutory matrices can be transferred easily to skew-involutory ones.
We will also consider the SVD of coninvolutory matrices, that is of matrices which satisfy see, e.g., [5]. As involutory matrices, coninvolutory are nonsingular and have positive singular values. Moreover, the singular values appear in pairs or are see [4]. Similar to the case of involutory matrices, we can give a relation between the matrices and in the SVD of in the form is a complex coninvolutory matrix consimilar111Two matrices and are said to be consimilar if there exists a nonsingular matrix such that [5]. to and consimilar to the identity. Similar observations have been given in [5]. Some of our findings also follow from [6, Theorem 7.1], see Section 4.
Skew-coninvolutory matrices that is, have been studied in [1]. Here we will briefly state how with our approach findings on the SVD of skew-coninvolutory matrices given in [1] can easily be rediscovered.
Our goal is to round off the picture drawn in the literature about the singular value decomposition of the four classes of matrices considered here. In particular we would like to make visible the relation between the singular vectors belonging to reciprocal pairs of singular values in the form of the matrix
The SVD of involutory matrices is treated at length in Section 2. In Section 3 we make immediate use of the results in Section 2 in order to discuss the SVD of skew-involutory matrices. Section 4 deals with coninvolutory matrices. Finally, the SVD of skew-coninvolutory matrices is discussed in Section 5.
2 Involutory matrices
Let be involutory, that is, holds. Thus, Symmetric permutation matrices and Hermitian unitary matrices are simple examples of involutory matrices. Nontrivial examples of involutory matrices can be found in [3, Page 165, 166, 170]. The spectrum of any involutory matrix can have at most two elements, as from for it follows that which gives
The SVD of involutory matrices has already been considered in [7]. In particular, the following theorem is given.
Theorem 1**.**
Let be an involutory matrix. Then and are idempotent, that is, Assume that has eigenvalues and eigenvalues (or eigenvalues and eigenvalues ). Then () is of rank and can be decomposed as () where have linear independent columns. Moreover, is at least positive semidefinite. There are singular values of equal to singular values which are equal to the eigenvalues of the matrix and singular values which are the reciprocal of these.
Thus, in [7] it was noted that the singular values of an involutory matrix may be or may appear in pairs Moreover, the minimal number of singular values is given by where denotes the number of eigenvalues of or the number of eigenvalues of , whichever is smallest. Further, in [7] it is said ”that the singular values of the involutory matrix are the roots of” (and ). This does not imply that the matrix does not have eigenvalues equal to This can be illustrated by with one eigenvalue and two eigenvalues Hence, in Theorem 1, and there is (at least) one singular value as For the other two singular values, the matrix with and and the matrix needs to be considered. Obviously, has the eigenvalue which, according to Theorem 1 is a singular value of Moreover, its reciprocal has to be a singular value. Hence, has three singular values two appearing as a pair and a ’single’ one.
In the following discussion we will see that apart from the pairing of the singular values, there is even more structure in the SVD of an involutory matrix by taking a closer look at and This will highlight the difference between the two types of singular values (pairs of singular values and single singular values ).
Let be a singular triplet of , that is, let hold. This is equivalent to and further to Thus, the singular triplet of is always accompanied by the singular triplet of In case this may collapse into a single triplet if or This allows for three cases:
In case we have a single singular value with the triplet In this case, it follows immediately that has an eigenvalue as we have 2. 2.
In case we have a single singular value with the triplet (or the triplet ). In this case, it follows immediately that has an eigenvalue as we have 3. 3.
In case we have a pair of singular values associated with the two triplets and
Therefore, singular values will appear in pairs while a singular value may appear in a pair in the sense that there are two triplets and or it may appear by itself as a triplet It follows immediately, that an involutory matrix of odd size must have at least one singular value
Clearly, due to the nonuniqueness of the SVD, no every SVD of has to display the pairing of the singular values identified above. But every SVD of can be easily modified so that this can be read off. Let us consider a small example first.
Example 2**.**
Consider the involutory, Hermitian and unitary matrix
[TABLE]
One possible SVD of is given by with
[TABLE]
We have and It can be seen immediately that there is the singular triplet Thus, there needs to be at least one other singular triplet of this type, but it can not be seen straightaway whether the other two singular values correspond to a pair of singular values with connected singular vectors or not. Please note that holds for
[TABLE]
Thus is another SVD of with
[TABLE]
Hence, there is one singular value which is part of the two related triplets and and two singular values which have no partner as their triplets are and In a similar way, any other SVD of can be modified in order to display the structure of the singular values and vectors.
Assume that an SVD is given where the singular values are ordered such that Let us first assume that Then Moreover, and or, equivalently, and Due to the essential uniqueness of singular vectors of singular values with multiplicity it follows that and for some Modifying and to
[TABLE]
yields unitary matrices and such that is a valid SVD displaying the pairing for the singular value In this fashion all singular values of multiplicity can be treated.
Next let us assume that Then Due to our observation concerning the singular vectors of pairs of singular values and the essential uniqueness of the SVD (1.2), it follows that
[TABLE]
for some unitary matrix Modifying and to
[TABLE]
yields unitary matrices and such that is a valid SVD displaying the pairing for the singular value In this fashion all singular values of multiplicity can be treated.
Finally we need to consider the singular values Similar as before, we can modify the columns of and so that the relation between the singular vectors becomes apparent.
This gives rise to the following theorem.
Theorem 3** (SVD of an involutory matrix).**
Let be involutory. Assume that has singular values These singular values appear in pairs associated with the singular triplets and Assume further that has singular values which appear in pairs associated with the singular triplets and Finally, assume that has single singular values associated with the singular triplet
Thus the SVD of is given by
[TABLE]
with and
[TABLE]
where and
[TABLE]
In particular, the signs do not need to be equal for all
For and from Theorem 3 we have
[TABLE]
where denote diagonal matrices with on the diagonal. The particular choice depends on the sign choice in the sequence in in Theorem 3. Clearly, and as well as are involutory.
Thus we have
[TABLE]
In other words, is unitarily similar to the real involutory matrix This canonical form is the most condensed involutory matrix unitarily similar to All relevant information concerning the singular values and the eigenvalues of can be read off of
Making use of the fact that all diagonal elements of are positive, we can rewrite as with Thus
[TABLE]
Hence, and are similar matrices and their eigenvalues are identical. Taking a closer look at we immediately see that is similar to
[TABLE]
with the orthogonal matrix
[TABLE]
Assume that there are positive and negative signs in the sequence in Then is similar to It is straightforward to see that
[TABLE]
Each pair of singular triplets and (including those with ) corresponds to a pair of eigenvalues A single singular triplet corresponds to an eigenvalue or depending on the sign in Our findings are summarized in the following corollary.
Corollary 4** (Canonical Form, Eigendecomposition).**
Let be involutory. Let be the SVD of Assume that has singular values singular values which appear in pairs single singular values associated with the singular triplet and single singular values associated with the singular triplet Here for as in Theorem 3. Then is unitarily similar to the real involutory matrix as in (2.2) and diagonalizable to see (2.3).
Remark 5**.**
If is involutory, then is idempotent, This has been used in [7], see Theorem 1. Using (2.2) we obtain for that holds as is involutory. We can easily construct an SVD of
[TABLE]
First permute with
[TABLE]
such that
[TABLE]
Next permute the blocks and to block diagonal form and Let be the corresponding permutation matrix such that
[TABLE]
is block diagonal with and diagonal blocks. The blocks are real symmetric and can be diagonalized by an orthogonal similarity transformation
[TABLE]
with and Let be the orthogonal matrix which diagonalizes
[TABLE]
with and This gives an SVD of and thus of In case has been chosen, we have
[TABLE]
and
[TABLE]
In case has been chosen, we need to take care of the minus sign in front of and
[TABLE]
with The SVD of is immediate.
Hence, if has pairs of singular values and then has pairs of singular values and Moreover, and give singular values or
Before we turn our attention to the skew-involutory case, we would like to point out that most of our observations given in this section also follow from [6, Theorem 7.2]. For the ease of the reader, this theorem is stated next.
Theorem 6**.**
Let If is normal, then is unitarily -congruent222Two matrices and are said to be -congruent if there exists a nonsingular matrix such that Thus, two unitarily -congruent matrices are unitarily similar. to a direct sum of blocks, each of which is
[TABLE]
This direct sum is uniquely determined by , up to permutation of its blocks. Conversely, if is unitarily -congruent to a direct sum of blocks of the form (2.4), then is normal.
In case Theorem 6 gives for the blocks that has to hold. For the blocks it follows Thus, and Let be the unitary matrix which transforms the involutory matrix as described in Theorem 6 ;
[TABLE]
with and Clearly, as
The unitary -congruence of as in (2.5) can be modified into an SVD. For any block , the corresponding singular value is At the same time, any block represent an eigenvalue of An eigenvector corresponding to can be read off of This eigenvector will serve as the corresponding right singular vector. The left singular vector will be chosen as in case the and as in case The SVD of a block is given by
[TABLE]
Thus, as and holds, the singular values appear in pairs There are columns from such that
[TABLE]
This gives
[TABLE]
Hence, singular values appear in pairs and are associated with the singular triplets and The fact that singular values can also appear in pairs with singular triplets in the form and does not follow from Theorem 6.
The unitary -congruence of can also be modified into an eigendecomposition. The blocks represent eigenvalues of a corresponding eigenvector can be read off of The eigenvalues of the blocks are and Each block can be diagonalized by a unitary matrix. Thus, Theorem 6 yields that any involutory matrix is unitarily diagonalizable to Here, it is assumed that there are blocks and blocks with blocks and blocks Comparing this result to our one in Corollary 4 we see that and
3 Skew-involutory matrices
Any skew-involutory matrix can be expressed as with an involutory matrix Thus we can immediately make use of the results from Section 2. As for the spectrum of an involutory matrix we have it follows that holds. Moreover, if the singular value decomposition of is given by with as in Theorem 3, then is an SVD of
In particular, it holds that any singular value of appears as a pair The singular triplet of is always accompanied by the singular triplet of In case this may collapse into a single triplet if or Thus, the SVD of can be given as in Theorem 3 where is modified such that
[TABLE]
Similar to before, and are closely connected
[TABLE]
Hence, we have
[TABLE]
In other words, is unitarily similar to the complex skew-involutory matrix which reveals all relevant information about the singular values and the eigenvalues of Moreover, is diagonalizable to with as in Corollary 4.
Please note, that Theorem 6 holds for skew-involutory matrices. Similar comments as those given at the end of Section 2 hold here.
4 Coninvolutory matrices
For any coninvolutory matrix we have as Any coninvolutory matrix can be expressed as for see, e.g., [4]. Any real coninvolutory matrix is also involutory. Since the singular values of are either or pairs Moreover, any coninvolutory matrix is condiagonalisable333 is said to be condiagonalizable if there exists a nonsingular matrix such that is diagonal [5]., see, e.g., [5, Chapter 4.6].
Let be singular triplet of a coninvolutory matrix , that is, let hold. This is equivalent to and further to Thus, the singular triplet of is always accompanied by the singular triplet of In case this may collapse into a single triplet if for a real scalar (as there is no need to consider ). The case implies that has a coneigenvalue as holds444A nonzero vector such that for some is said to be an coneigenvector of the scalar is an coneigenvalue of [5].. It follows immediately, that coninvolutory matrix of odd size must have a singular value
This gives rise the following theorem.
Theorem 7**.**
Let be coninvolutory. Assume that has singular values These singular values appear in pairs associated with the singular triplets and Assume further that has singular values which appear in pairs associated with the singular triplets and Then has single singular values associated with the singular triplet
Thus the SVD of is given by
[TABLE]
with and
[TABLE]
where and
[TABLE]
For and from Theorem 7 we have
[TABLE]
with the unitary and coninvolutory diagonal matrices
[TABLE]
Thus we have with
[TABLE]
In other words, is unitarily consimilar to the complex coninvolutory matrix A similar statement is given in [5, Exercise 4.6P27] (just write and as a product of their square roots and move the square roots into and ).
As in Section 2 we obtain
[TABLE]
Hence, and are consimilar matrices and their coneigenvalues are identical. Taking a closer look at we immediately see that is unitarily consimilar to the identity
[TABLE]
with the unitary matrix
[TABLE]
Thus, all coneigenvalues of a coninvolutory matrix are This has already been observed in [5, Theorem 4.6.9].
The following corollary summarizes our findings.
Corollary 8** (Canonical Form, Coneigendecomposition).**
Let be coninvolutory. Then is unitarily consimilar to the coninvolutory matrix as in (4.2) and consimilar to the identity.
Before we turn our attention to the skew-coninvolutory case, we would like to point out that most of our observations given in this section also follow easily from [6, Theorem 7.1]. For the ease of the reader, this theorem is stated next.
Theorem 9**.**
Let If is normal, then is unitarily congruent to a direct sum of blocks, each of which is
[TABLE]
This direct sum is uniquely determined by up to permutation of its blocks and replacement of any nonzero parameter by with a corresponding replacement of by Conversely, if is unitarily congruent to a direct sum of blocks of the form (4.3), then is normal.
In case Theorem 9 gives for the blocks that has to hold. For the blocks it follows and Thus, as we have Analogous to the discussion at the end of Section 2 part of our findings, in particular the pairing of the singular values and the relation of the corresponding singular vectors, follows from this; see also [6, Corollary 8.4]. The fact, that singular values may also appear in pairs with related singular triplets does not follow from Theorem 9.
5 Skew-coninvolutory matrices
For any skew-coninvolutory matrix we have as Skew-coninvolutory matrices exist only for even as is nonnegative for any Properties and canonical forms of skew-coninvolutory matrices have been analyzed in detail in [1].
From we see that Thus, the singular values appear in pairs (see [1, Proposition 5]) and the singular triplet of is always accompanied by the singular triplet of There is no need to consider singular values separately, as their singular vectors do not satisfy any additional condition. This gives rise to the following theorem.
Theorem 10**.**
Let be skew-coninvolutory. has singular values These singular values appear in pairs associated with the singular triplets and
Thus the SVD of is given by
[TABLE]
with and
[TABLE]
For and from Theorem 10 we have with Thus we have Any skew-coninvolutory matrix is unitarily consimilar to the elementary skew-coninvolutory matrix Observe
[TABLE]
(see [1, Theorem 12]). Let Thus and are consimilar matrices (see [1, Theorem 13]).
In summary, we have the following corollary.
Corollary 11** (Canonical Form, Consimilarity).**
Let be skew-coninvolutory. Then is unitarily consimilar to the skew-coninvolutory matrix as in (5.1) and consimilar to
Please note, that Theorem 9 holds for skew-coninvolutory matrices. Similar comments as those given at the end of Section 4 hold here, see also [6, Theorem 8.3].
6 Concluding remarks
We have described the SVD of (skew-)involutory and (skew-)coninvolutory matrices in detail. In order to do so we made use of the fact that for any matrix in one of the four classes of matrices the singular values appear in pairs while singular values may appear in pairs or by themselves. As the singular vectors of pairs of singular values are closely related, the SVD reveals all relevant information also about the eigenvalues and eigenvectors. Some of our findings are new, some are rediscoveries of known results.
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