I want to prove that if matrices E_(i,j) in KK^(m,n) are matrices with all zeros except for one 1 on the i,j index, then tr((E_(i,j))^T E_(k,l)) equals 1 if E_(i,j)=E_(k,l) and 0 in other cases. I have an intuition that this is true but I don't know how to formally prove it.

Hallie Stanton

Hallie Stanton

Answered question

2022-11-11

I want to prove that if matrices E i , j in K m , n are matrices with all zeros except for one 1 on the i , j index, then tr ( ( E i , j ) T E k , l ) equals 1 if E i , j = E k , l and 0 in other cases. I have an intuition that this is true but I don't know how to formally prove it.

Answer & Explanation

Houston Ochoa

Houston Ochoa

Beginner2022-11-12Added 19 answers

Given a matrix A M a t ( n × m , R ), let A ~ R n m be the vector whose entries are the entries of A, listed row after row. You can show (using the definitions of trace and matrix multiplication) that t r ( A T B ) equals the inner product of A ~ and B ~ in R n m . Very obviously the matrices E i j correspond to the standard basis of R n m , and the standard basis is orthonormal.

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