Approximation Theory for Matrices

We review the theory of optimal polynomial and rational Chebyshev approximations, and Zolotarev's formula for the sign function over the range (\epsilon \leq |z| \leq1). We explain how rational approximations can be applied to large sparse matrices efficiently by making use of partial fraction expansions and multi-shift Krylov space solvers.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure