Triangular matrixIn mathematics, a triangular matrix is a special kind of square matrix. A square matrix is called if all the entries above the main diagonal are zero. Similarly, a square matrix is called if all the entries below the main diagonal are zero. Because matrix equations with triangular matrices are easier to solve, they are very important in numerical analysis. By the LU decomposition algorithm, an invertible matrix may be written as the product of a lower triangular matrix L and an upper triangular matrix U if and only if all its leading principal minors are non-zero.
Linear subspaceIn mathematics, and more specifically in linear algebra, a linear subspace or vector subspace is a vector space that is a subset of some larger vector space. A linear subspace is usually simply called a subspace when the context serves to distinguish it from other types of subspaces. If V is a vector space over a field K and if W is a subset of V, then W is a linear subspace of V if under the operations of V, W is a vector space over K.
Distributive propertyIn mathematics, the distributive property of binary operations is a generalization of the distributive law, which asserts that the equality is always true in elementary algebra. For example, in elementary arithmetic, one has Therefore, one would say that multiplication distributes over addition. This basic property of numbers is part of the definition of most algebraic structures that have two operations called addition and multiplication, such as complex numbers, polynomials, matrices, rings, and fields.
Gamma matricesIn mathematical physics, the gamma matrices, also called the Dirac matrices, are a set of conventional matrices with specific anticommutation relations that ensure they generate a matrix representation of the Clifford algebra It is also possible to define higher-dimensional gamma matrices. When interpreted as the matrices of the action of a set of orthogonal basis vectors for contravariant vectors in Minkowski space, the column vectors on which the matrices act become a space of spinors, on which the Clifford algebra of spacetime acts.
Linear combinationIn mathematics, a linear combination is an expression constructed from a set of terms by multiplying each term by a constant and adding the results (e.g. a linear combination of x and y would be any expression of the form ax + by, where a and b are constants). The concept of linear combinations is central to linear algebra and related fields of mathematics. Most of this article deals with linear combinations in the context of a vector space over a field, with some generalizations given at the end of the article.
Distributivity (order theory)In the mathematical area of order theory, there are various notions of the common concept of distributivity, applied to the formation of suprema and infima. Most of these apply to partially ordered sets that are at least lattices, but the concept can in fact reasonably be generalized to semilattices as well. Probably the most common type of distributivity is the one defined for lattices, where the formation of binary suprema and infima provide the total operations of join () and meet ().
Special linear Lie algebraIn mathematics, the special linear Lie algebra of order n (denoted or ) is the Lie algebra of matrices with trace zero and with the Lie bracket . This algebra is well studied and understood, and is often used as a model for the study of other Lie algebras. The Lie group that it generates is the special linear group. The Lie algebra is central to the study of special relativity, general relativity and supersymmetry: its fundamental representation is the so-called spinor representation, while its adjoint representation generates the Lorentz group SO(3,1) of special relativity.
General linear groupIn mathematics, the general linear group of degree n is the set of n×n invertible matrices, together with the operation of ordinary matrix multiplication. This forms a group, because the product of two invertible matrices is again invertible, and the inverse of an invertible matrix is invertible, with identity matrix as the identity element of the group. The group is so named because the columns (and also the rows) of an invertible matrix are linearly independent, hence the vectors/points they define are in general linear position, and matrices in the general linear group take points in general linear position to points in general linear position.
Linear algebraic groupIn mathematics, a linear algebraic group is a subgroup of the group of invertible matrices (under matrix multiplication) that is defined by polynomial equations. An example is the orthogonal group, defined by the relation where is the transpose of . Many Lie groups can be viewed as linear algebraic groups over the field of real or complex numbers. (For example, every compact Lie group can be regarded as a linear algebraic group over R (necessarily R-anisotropic and reductive), as can many noncompact groups such as the simple Lie group SL(n,R).
Distributive latticeIn mathematics, a distributive lattice is a lattice in which the operations of join and meet distribute over each other. The prototypical examples of such structures are collections of sets for which the lattice operations can be given by set union and intersection. Indeed, these lattices of sets describe the scenery completely: every distributive lattice is—up to isomorphism—given as such a lattice of sets. As in the case of arbitrary lattices, one can choose to consider a distributive lattice L either as a structure of order theory or of universal algebra.
Completely distributive latticeIn the mathematical area of order theory, a completely distributive lattice is a complete lattice in which arbitrary joins distribute over arbitrary meets. Formally, a complete lattice L is said to be completely distributive if, for any doubly indexed family {xj,k | j in J, k in Kj} of L, we have where F is the set of choice functions f choosing for each index j of J some index f(j) in Kj. Complete distributivity is a self-dual property, i.e. dualizing the above statement yields the same class of complete lattices.
Hadamard product (matrices)In mathematics, the Hadamard product (also known as the element-wise product, entrywise product or Schur product) is a binary operation that takes in two matrices of the same dimensions and returns a matrix of the multiplied corresponding elements. This operation can be thought as a "naive matrix multiplication" and is different from the matrix product. It is attributed to, and named after, either French-Jewish mathematician Jacques Hadamard or German-Jewish mathematician Issai Schur.
