English

Idempotent systems

Rings and Algebras 2020-05-01 v1

Abstract

In this paper we introduce the notion of an idempotent system. This linear algebraic object is motivated by the structure of an association scheme. We focus on a family of idempotent systems, said to be symmetric. A symmetric idempotent system is an abstraction of the primary module for the subconstituent algebra of a symmetric association scheme. We describe the symmetric idempotent systems in detail. We also consider a class of symmetric idempotent systems, said to be PP-polynomial and QQ-polynomial. In the topic of orthogonal polynomials there is an object called a Leonard system. We show that a Leonard system is essentially the same thing as a symmetric idempotent system that is PP-polynomial and QQ-polynomial.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2004.14997,
  title  = {Idempotent systems},
  author = {Kazumasa Nomura and Paul Terwilliger},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2004.14997},
  year   = {2020}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-23T15:13:20.303Z