Matrices

We have seen that in a particular basis ei both vectors and linear operators can be described in terms of their components with respect to the basis. These components may be displayed as an array of numbers called a matrix. In general, if a linear operatorAtransforms vectors from an N-dimensional vector space, for which we choose a basis ej , j = 1, 2, . . . , N, into vectors belonging to an M-dimensional vector space, with basis fi , i = 1, 2, . . . , M, then we may represent the operator A by the matrix A=

A11 A12 . . . A1N A21 A22 . . . A2N

... ... ... ...

AM1 AM2 . . . AMN

. (1.24) The matrix elements Aij are the components of the linear operator with respect to the bases ej and fi ; the component Aij of the linear operator appears in the ith row and j th column of the matrix. The array has M rows and N columns and is thus called an M N matrix. If the dimensions of the two vector spaces are the same, i.e.M = N (for example, if they are the same vector space) then we may represent A by an N N or square matrix of order N. The component Aij , which in general may be complex, is also commonly denoted by (A)ij . In a similar way we may denote a vector x in terms of its components xi in a basis ei ,

i = 1, 2, . . . , N, by the array
x=

x1 x2
...

xN