New Structured Matrix Methods for Real and Complex Polynomial Root-finding

We combine the known methods for univariate polynomial root-finding and for computations in the Frobenius matrix algebra with our novel techniques to advance numerical solution of a univariate polynomial equation, and in particular numerical approximation of the real roots of a polynomial. Our analysis and experiments show efficiency of the resulting algorithms.Comment: 18 page

Novel Approach to Real Polynomial Root-finding and Matrix Eigen-solving

Univariate polynomial root-finding is both classical and important for modern computing. Frequently one seeks just the real roots of a polynomial with real coefficients. They can be approximated at a low computational cost if the polynomial has no nonreal roots, but typically nonreal roots are much more numerous than the real ones. We dramatically accelerate the known algorithms in this case by exploiting the correlation between the computations with matrices and polynomials, extending the techniques of the matrix sign iteration, and exploiting the structure of the companion matrix of the input polynomial. We extend some of the proposed techniques to the approximation of the real eigenvalues of a real nonsymmetric matrix.Comment: 17 pages, added algorithm

A constructive method for decomposing real representations

A constructive method for decomposing finite dimensional representations of semisimple real Lie algebras is developed. The method is illustrated by an example. We also discuss an implementation of the algorithm in the language of the computer algebra system {\sf GAP}4.Comment: Final version; to appear in "Journal of Symbolic Computation

Solving polynomial eigenvalue problems by means of the Ehrlich-Aberth method

Given the $n\times n$ matrix polynomial $P(x)=\sum_{i=0}^kP_i x^i$, we consider the associated polynomial eigenvalue problem. This problem, viewed in terms of computing the roots of the scalar polynomial $\det P(x)$, is treated in polynomial form rather than in matrix form by means of the Ehrlich-Aberth iteration. The main computational issues are discussed, namely, the choice of the starting approximations needed to start the Ehrlich-Aberth iteration, the computation of the Newton correction, the halting criterion, and the treatment of eigenvalues at infinity. We arrive at an effective implementation which provides more accurate approximations to the eigenvalues with respect to the methods based on the QZ algorithm. The case of polynomials having special structures, like palindromic, Hamiltonian, symplectic, etc., where the eigenvalues have special symmetries in the complex plane, is considered. A general way to adapt the Ehrlich-Aberth iteration to structured matrix polynomial is introduced. Numerical experiments which confirm the effectiveness of this approach are reported.Comment: Submitted to Linear Algebra App

Efficient numerical diagonalization of hermitian 3x3 matrices

A very common problem in science is the numerical diagonalization of symmetric or hermitian 3x3 matrices. Since standard "black box" packages may be too inefficient if the number of matrices is large, we study several alternatives. We consider optimized implementations of the Jacobi, QL, and Cuppen algorithms and compare them with an analytical method relying on Cardano's formula for the eigenvalues and on vector cross products for the eigenvectors. Jacobi is the most accurate, but also the slowest method, while QL and Cuppen are good general purpose algorithms. The analytical algorithm outperforms the others by more than a factor of 2, but becomes inaccurate or may even fail completely if the matrix entries differ greatly in magnitude. This can mostly be circumvented by using a hybrid method, which falls back to QL if conditions are such that the analytical calculation might become too inaccurate. For all algorithms, we give an overview of the underlying mathematical ideas, and present detailed benchmark results. C and Fortran implementations of our code are available for download from http://www.mpi-hd.mpg.de/~globes/3x3/ .Comment: 13 pages, no figures, new hybrid algorithm added, matches published version, typo in Eq. (39) corrected; software library available at http://www.mpi-hd.mpg.de/~globes/3x3