Finding alternate transformation matrix for similarity transformation A pair of square matrices

codosse2e

codosse2e

Answered question

2022-05-19

Finding alternate transformation matrix for similarity transformation
A pair of square matrices X and Y are called similar if there exists a nonsingular matrix T such that T 1 X T = Y holds. It is known that the transformation matrix T is not unique for given X and Y. I'm just wondering whether those non-unique transformation matrices would have any relation among themselves, like having column vectors with same directions...
What I want to mean is: Given X and Y a pair of similar matrices, if S and T are two possible transformation matrices satisfying S 1 X S = T 1 X T = Y, is there any generic (apart from scaling) relation between T and S (e.g., direction of column vectors)?
For a specific example, consider X = [ A B K C 0 ] and Y = [ A + A 1 B K C A 1 B K C A 1 B K C K C A 1 B ] . Assuming K to be invertible it can be shown that X and Y are similar with transformation matrix T = [ I A 1 B 0 K 1 ] . Can there be any other matrix S which will be independent of K, and would result S 1 X S = Y?

Answer & Explanation

redclick53

redclick53

Beginner2022-05-20Added 12 answers

You can always use S = α T with α some non-zero scalar not equal to one. Another way of finding more solutions is by using the Kronecker product, which allows you to write the transformation as
X T = T Y ( I X ) vec T = ( Y I ) vec T ( I X Y I ) vec T = 0
Using any (non-zero) vector which lies in the null space of I X Y I for vec T will satisfy the equation. If the dimension of the null space is one then you can only do the scalar multiplication. If the dimension is bigger then one you can also take a linear combinations of linear independent solutions.

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