1.II.9G

Linear Algebra | Part IB, 2007

State and prove Sylvester's law of inertia for a real quadratic form.

[You may assume that for each real symmetric matrix A there is an orthogonal matrix UU, such that U1AUU^{-1} A U is diagonal.]

Suppose that VV is a real vector space of even dimension 2m2 m, that QQ is a non-singular quadratic form on VV and that UU is an mm-dimensional subspace of VV on which QQ vanishes. What is the signature of Q?Q ?

Typos? Please submit corrections to this page on GitHub.