Pentadiagonal Oscillatory Matrices with Two Spectrum in Common

Abstract

We denote the spectrum of an square matrix A by σ(A), and that of the matrix obtained by deleting the first i rows and columns of A by σi(A). It is known that a symmetric pentadiagonal oscillatory (SPO) matrix may be constructed from σ, σ1 and σ2. The pairs σ, σ1 and σ1, σ2 must interlace; the construction is not unique; and the conditions on the data which ensure that A is oscillatory are extremely complicated. Given one SPO matrix A, the paper shows that operations may be applied to A to construct a family of such matrices with σ and σ1 in common. Moreover, given one totally positive (TP) matrix A, we construct a family of TP matrices with σ, σ1 and σ2 in common.