Matrix decomposition

In the mathematical discipline of linear algebra, a matrix decomposition or matrix factorization is a factorization of a matrix into a product of matrices. There are many different matrix decompositions; each finds use among a particular class of problems.

Example

In numerical analysis, different decompositions are used to implement efficient matrix algorithms.
For example, when solving a system of linear equations, the matrix A can be decomposed via the LU decomposition. The LU decomposition factorizes a matrix into a triangular matrix">triangular matrix">triangular matrix L and an upper triangular matrix U. The systems and require fewer additions and multiplications to solve, compared with the original system, though one might require significantly more digits in inexact arithmetic such as floating point.
Similarly, the QR decomposition expresses A as QR with Q an orthogonal matrix and R an upper triangular matrix. The system Q = b is solved by Rx = Q''^Tb' = c, and the system Rx = c''' is solved by 'back substitution'. The number of additions and multiplications required is about twice that of using the LU solver, but no more digits are required in inexact arithmetic because the QR decomposition is numerically stable.

Decompositions related to solving systems of linear equations

LU decomposition

Traditionally applicable to: square matrix A, although rectangular matrices can be applicable.
Decomposition:, where L is lower triangular and U is upper triangular.
Related: the LDU decomposition is, where L is lower triangular with ones on the diagonal, U is upper triangular with ones on the diagonal, and D is a diagonal matrix.
Related: the LUP decomposition is, where L is lower triangular, U is upper triangular, and P is a permutation matrix.
Existence: An LUP decomposition exists for any square matrix A. When P is an identity matrix, the LUP decomposition reduces to the LU decomposition.
Comments: The LUP and LU decompositions are useful in solving an n-by-n system of linear equations. These decompositions summarize the process of Gaussian elimination in matrix form. Matrix P represents any row interchanges carried out in the process of Gaussian elimination. If Gaussian elimination produces the row echelon form without requiring any row interchanges, then P = I, so an LU decomposition exists.

Rank factorization

Applicable to: m-by-n matrix A of rank r
Decomposition: where C is an m-by-r full column rank matrix and F is an r-by-n full row rank matrix
Comment: The rank factorization can be used to compute the Moore–Penrose pseudoinverse of A, which one can apply to obtain all solutions of the linear system.

Cholesky decomposition

Applicable to: square, hermitian, positive definite matrix
Decomposition:, where is upper triangular with real positive diagonal entries
Comment: if the matrix is Hermitian and positive semi-definite, then it has a decomposition of the form if the diagonal entries of are allowed to be zero
Uniqueness: for positive definite matrices Cholesky decomposition is unique. However, it is not unique in the positive semi-definite case.
Comment: if is real and symmetric, has all real elements
Comment: An alternative is the LDL decomposition, which can avoid extracting square roots.

QR decomposition

Applicable to: m-by-n matrix A with linearly independent columns
Decomposition: where is a unitary matrix of size m-by-m, and is an upper triangular matrix of size m-by-n
Uniqueness: In general it is not unique, but if is of full rank, then there exists a single that has all positive diagonal elements. If is square, also is unique.
Comment: The QR decomposition provides an effective way to solve the system of equations. The fact that is orthogonal means that, so that is equivalent to, which is very easy to solve since is triangular.

Decompositions based on eigenvalues and related concepts

Eigendecomposition

Also called spectral decomposition.
Applicable to: square matrix A with linearly independent eigenvectors.
Decomposition:, where D is a diagonal matrix formed from the eigenvalues of A, and the columns of V are the corresponding eigenvectors of A.
Existence: An n-by-n matrix A always has n eigenvalues, which can be ordered to form an n-by-n diagonal matrix D and a corresponding matrix of nonzero columns V that satisfies the eigenvalue equation. is invertible if and only if the n eigenvectors are linearly independent. A sufficient condition for this to happen is that all the eigenvalues are different
Comment: One can always normalize the eigenvectors to have length one
Comment: Every normal matrix A can be eigendecomposed. For a normal matrix A, the eigenvectors can also be made orthonormal and the eigendecomposition reads as. In particular all unitary, Hermitian, or skew-Hermitian matrices are normal and therefore possess this property.
Comment: For any real symmetric matrix A, the eigendecomposition always exists and can be written as, where both D and V are real-valued.
Comment: The eigendecomposition is useful for understanding the solution of a system of linear ordinary differential equations or linear difference equations. For example, the difference equation starting from the initial condition is solved by, which is equivalent to, where V and D are the matrices formed from the eigenvectors and eigenvalues of A. Since D is diagonal, raising it to power, just involves raising each element on the diagonal to the power t. This is much easier to do and understand than raising A to power t, since A is usually not diagonal.

Jordan decomposition

The Jordan normal form and the Jordan–Chevalley decomposition

Applicable to: square matrix A
Comment: the Jordan normal form generalizes the eigendecomposition to cases where there are repeated eigenvalues and cannot be diagonalized, the Jordan–Chevalley decomposition does this without choosing a basis.

Schur decomposition

Applicable to: square matrix A
Decomposition :, where U is a unitary matrix, is the conjugate transpose of U, and T is an upper triangular matrix called the complex Schur form which has the eigenvalues of A along its diagonal.
Comment: if A is a normal matrix, then T is diagonal and the Schur decomposition coincides with the spectral decomposition.

Real Schur decomposition

Applicable to: square matrix A
Decomposition: This is a version of Schur decomposition where and only contain real numbers. One can always write where V is a real orthogonal matrix, is the transpose of V, and S is a block upper triangular matrix called the real Schur form. The blocks on the diagonal of S are of size 1×1 or 2×2.

QZ decomposition

Also called: generalized Schur decomposition
Applicable to: square matrices A and B
Comment: there are two versions of this decomposition: complex and real.
Decomposition : and where Q and Z are unitary matrices, the * superscript represents conjugate transpose, and S and T are upper triangular matrices.
Comment: in the complex QZ decomposition, the ratios of the diagonal elements of S to the corresponding diagonal elements of T,, are the generalized eigenvalues that solve the generalized eigenvalue problem .
Decomposition : and where A, B, Q, Z, S, and T are matrices containing real numbers only. In this case Q and Z are orthogonal matrices, the T superscript represents transposition, and S and T are block upper triangular matrices. The blocks on the diagonal of S and T are of size 1×1 or 2×2.

Takagi's factorization

Applicable to: square, complex, symmetric matrix A.
Decomposition:, where D is a real nonnegative diagonal matrix, and V is unitary. denotes the matrix transpose of V.
Comment: The diagonal elements of D are the nonnegative square roots of the eigenvalues of.
Comment: V may be complex even if A is real.
Comment: This is not a special case of the eigendecomposition, which uses instead of. Moreover, if A is not real, it is not Hermitian and the form using also does not apply.

Singular value decomposition

Applicable to: m-by-n matrix A.
Decomposition:, where D is a nonnegative diagonal matrix, and U and V satisfy. Here is the conjugate transpose of V, and I denotes the identity matrix.
Comment: The diagonal elements of D are called the singular values of A.
Comment: Like the eigendecomposition above, the singular value decomposition involves finding basis directions along which matrix multiplication is equivalent to scalar multiplication, but it has greater generality since the matrix under consideration need not be square.
Uniqueness: the singular values of are always uniquely determined. and need not to be unique in general.

Scale-invariant decompositions

Refers to variants of existing matrix decompositions, such as the SVD, that are invariant with respect to diagonal scaling.

Applicable to: m-by-n matrix A.
Unit-Scale-Invariant Singular-Value Decomposition:, where S is a unique nonnegative diagonal matrix of scale-invariant singular values, U and V are unitary matrices, is the conjugate transpose of V, and positive diagonal matrices D and E.
Comment: Is analogous to the SVD except that the diagonal elements of S are invariant with respect to left and/or right multiplication of A by arbitrary nonsingular diagonal matrices, as opposed to the standard SVD for which the singular values are invariant with respect to left and/or right multiplication of A by arbitrary unitary matrices.
Comment: Is an alternative to the standard SVD when invariance is required with respect to diagonal rather than unitary transformations of A.
Uniqueness: The scale-invariant singular values of are always uniquely determined. Diagonal matrices D and E, and unitary U and V, are not necessarily unique in general.
Comment: U and V matrices are not the same as those from the SVD.

Analogous scale-invariant decompositions can be derived from other matrix decompositions; for example, to obtain scale-invariant eigenvalues.

Hessenberg decomposition

Applicable to: square matrix A.
Decomposition: where is the Hessenberg matrix and is a unitary matrix.
Comment: often the first step in the Schur decomposition.

Complete orthogonal decomposition

Also known as: UTV decomposition, ULV decomposition, URV decomposition.
Applicable to: m-by-n matrix A.
Decomposition:, where T is a triangular matrix, and U and V are unitary matrices.
Comment: Similar to the singular value decomposition and to the Schur decomposition.

Other decompositions

Polar decomposition

Applicable to: any square complex matrix A.
Decomposition: or , where U is a unitary matrix and P and P' are positive semidefinite Hermitian matrices.
Uniqueness: is always unique and equal to . If is invertible, then is unique.
Comment: Since any Hermitian matrix admits a spectral decomposition with a unitary matrix, can be written as. Since is positive semidefinite, all elements in are non-negative. Since the product of two unitary matrices is unitary, taking one can write which is the singular value decomposition. Hence, the existence of the polar decomposition is equivalent to the existence of the singular value decomposition.

Algebraic polar decomposition

Applicable to: square, complex, non-singular matrix A.
Decomposition:, where Q is a complex orthogonal matrix and S is complex symmetric matrix.
Uniqueness: If has no negative real eigenvalues, then the decomposition is unique.
Comment: The existence of this decomposition is equivalent to being similar to.
Comment: A variant of this decomposition is, where R is a real matrix and C is a circular matrix.

Mostow's decomposition

Applicable to: square, complex, non-singular matrix A.
Decomposition:, where U is unitary, M is real anti-symmetric and S is real symmetric.
Comment: The matrix A can also be decomposed as, where U₂ is unitary, M₂ is real anti-symmetric and S₂ is real symmetric.

Sinkhorn normal form

Applicable to: square real matrix A with strictly positive elements.
Decomposition:, where S is doubly stochastic and D₁ and D₂ are real diagonal matrices with strictly positive elements.

Sectoral decomposition

Applicable to: square, complex matrix A with numerical range contained in the sector.
Decomposition:, where C is an invertible complex matrix and with all.

Williamson's normal form

Applicable to: square, positive-definite real matrix A with order 2n×2n.
Decomposition:, where is a symplectic matrix and D is a nonnegative n-by-n diagonal matrix.

Matrix square root

Decomposition:, not unique in general.
In the case of positive semidefinite, there is a unique positive semidefinite such that.

Generalizations

There exist analogues of the SVD, QR, LU and Cholesky factorizations for quasimatrices and cmatrices or continuous matrices. A "quasimatrix" is, like a matrix, a rectangular scheme whose elements are indexed, but one discrete index is replaced by a continuous index. Likewise, a "cmatrix", is continuous in both indices. As an example of a cmatrix, one can think of the kernel of an integral operator.
These factorizations are based on early work by,, and. For an account and a translation to English of the seminal papers, see.