English

Tridiagonal real symmetric matrices with a connection to Pascal's triangle and the Fibonacci sequence

Combinatorics 2023-08-23 v3 Number Theory

Abstract

We explore a certain family {An}n=1\{A_n\}_{n=1}^{\infty} of n×nn \times n tridiagonal real symmetric matrices. After deriving a three-term recurrence relation for the characteristic polynomials of this family, we find a closed form solution. The coefficients of these characteristic polynomials turn out to involve the diagonal entries of Pascal's triangle in a tantalizingly predictive manner. Lastly, we explore a relation between the eigenvalues of various members of the family. More specifically, we give a sufficient condition on the values m,nNm,n \in \mathbb{N} for when spec(Am)\texttt{spec}(A_m) is contained in spec(An)\texttt{spec}(A_n). We end the paper with a number of open questions, one of which intertwines our characteristic polynomials with the Fibonacci sequence in an intriguing manner involving ellipses.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2201.08490,
  title  = {Tridiagonal real symmetric matrices with a connection to Pascal's triangle and the Fibonacci sequence},
  author = {Emily Gullerud and Rita Johnson and aBa Mbirika},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2201.08490},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

23 pages, 8 figures. Version 2 was not the submitted version. Version 3 is the submitted version. We added a new subsection on a connection to Chebyshev polynomials of the second kind, and we improved the exposition for journal submission

R2 v1 2026-06-24T08:57:18.437Z