A method for computing the Perron root for primitive matrices

Abstract

SummaryFollowing the Perron theorem, the spectral radius of a primitive matrix is a simple eigenvalue. It is shown that for a primitive matrix A, there is a positive rank one matrix X such that B = A ∘ X, where ∘ denotes the Hadamard product of matrices, and such that the row (column) sums of matrix B are the same and equal to the Perron root. An iterative algorithm is presented to obtain matrix B without an explicit knowledge of X. The convergence rate of this algorithm is similar to that of the power method but it uses less computational load. A byproduct of the proposed algorithm is a new method for calculating the first eigenvector.