In linear algebra, the Frobenius companion matrix of the monic polynomial is the square matrix defined as Some authors use the transpose of this matrix, , which is more convenient for some purposes such as linear recurrence relations (see below). is defined from the coefficients of , while the characteristic polynomial as well as the minimal polynomial of are equal to . In this sense, the matrix and the polynomial are "companions". Any matrix A with entries in a field F has characteristic polynomial , which in turn has companion matrix .
In mathematics, every analytic function can be used for defining a matrix function that maps square matrices with complex entries to square matrices of the same size. This is used for defining the exponential of a matrix, which is involved in the closed-form solution of systems of linear differential equations. There are several techniques for lifting a real function to a square matrix function such that interesting properties are maintained. All of the following techniques yield the same matrix function, but the domains on which the function is defined may differ.
In mathematics, a logarithm of a matrix is another matrix such that the matrix exponential of the latter matrix equals the original matrix. It is thus a generalization of the scalar logarithm and in some sense an inverse function of the matrix exponential. Not all matrices have a logarithm and those matrices that do have a logarithm may have more than one logarithm. The study of logarithms of matrices leads to Lie theory since when a matrix has a logarithm then it is in an element of a Lie group and the logarithm is the corresponding element of the vector space of the Lie algebra.
In mathematics, the matrix exponential is a matrix function on square matrices analogous to the ordinary exponential function. It is used to solve systems of linear differential equations. In the theory of Lie groups, the matrix exponential gives the exponential map between a matrix Lie algebra and the corresponding Lie group. Let X be an n×n real or complex matrix. The exponential of X, denoted by eX or exp(X), is the n×n matrix given by the power series where is defined to be the identity matrix with the same dimensions as .
In linear algebra, a defective matrix is a square matrix that does not have a complete basis of eigenvectors, and is therefore not diagonalizable. In particular, an n × n matrix is defective if and only if it does not have n linearly independent eigenvectors. A complete basis is formed by augmenting the eigenvectors with generalized eigenvectors, which are necessary for solving defective systems of ordinary differential equations and other problems.