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For a square matrix $A$. Define $exp(A)=I+\sum_{n}A^{n}/(n!)$ . I need to prove two things

  1. exp(A) converges and is invertible.
  2. Its inverse is given by exp(-A).

Second part is straightforward. Can anyone help on first part?

  • 0
    ok, you mean to prove convergernce with the resulting triangular matrix?2012-11-28

2 Answers 2

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We can show convergence by normal convergence.

$\sum_{k=0}^{\infty} ||\frac{A^k}{k!}|| \le \sum_{k=0}^{\infty} \frac{||A||^k}{k!} = e^{||A||}$. Where $||\cdot||$ is a sub-multiplicative norm (e.g. operator norm)

For invertibility, there's probably a nicer way to show this, but I would just show that if $A$ and $B$ commute, then $e^{A+B} = e^{A}e^{B}$.

$e^{A+B} = \sum_{k=0}^{\infty} \frac{(A+B)^k}{k!} = \sum_{k=0}^{\infty} \sum_{i=0}^k \frac{A^i B^{k-i}}{k!} \binom{k}{i} = \sum_{k=0}^{\infty} \sum_{i=0}^k \frac{A^i B^{k-i}}{i! (k-i)!} = \sum_{k=0}^{\infty} \sum_{i+h=k} \frac{A^i B^{h}}{i! h!} = \sum_{i=0}^{\infty} \sum_{h=0}^{\infty} \frac{A^i B^{h}}{i! h!} = e^A e^B$

$A$ and $-A$ commute so $e^A e^{-A}= e^{A - A} = e^{0} = I$

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    +1 Beat me to it. For convergence work we must assume that the entries of $A$ are either real or complex numbers, but that is not unreasonable. It fails for e.g. $A=I$ in the $p$-adics :-)2012-11-27
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It's possible to do this rather cutely with Jacobi's formula, which can be used to show that: $ \det(e^{cA})=e^{\text{tr}(cA)} $

Let $c=1$. Then $\det(e^{A})=e^{\text{tr}(A)}$, but $e^{\text{tr}(A)}>0$, so $\det(e^A)\ne 0$, which means $e^A$ must be invertible. (For convergence, I don't think one can do better than using the sub-multiplicativity of an operator norm, as the other answer does).