Tridiagonal real symmetric matrices with a connection to Pascal's triangle and the Fibonacci sequence
Abstract
We explore a certain family of 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 for when is contained in . 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.
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