Another look at a matrix of Mark Kac (Q803232): Difference between revisions

The matrix considered here is the \((n+1)\times (n+1)\) triple diagonal matrix \(S_ n\) which has superdiagonal 1,2,...,n, subdiagonal n,n- 1,...,2,1 and zeros elsewhere. The authors give a historical survey and give new proofs of the results of \textit{M. Kac} [``Probability and related topics in physical sciences'' (1959; Zbl 0087.330)] and \textit{P. Rózsa} [Magyar. Tud. Akad. mat. fiz. Tud. Oszt. Közleményei 7, 199-206 (1957; Zbl 0101.254)]: the characteristic values of \(S_ n\) are \(\pm n\), \(\pm (n-2),...\), where the sequence ends with \(\pm 1\) when n is odd and \(\pm 2\), 0 when n is even; letting each column eigenvector have leading element 1, if U is the matrix of column eigenvectors of \(S_ n\) corresponding to the ordering \(n,n-2,...,-n+2,n\) of the eigenvalues then \(U^ 2=2^ nI\). Finally they give proofs of two binomial identities of the first author: \[ \frac{1}{2n+1} \sum^{n}_{j=1}\binom{2n+1}{n+j+1}(2j+1)^ 2=2^{2n} \text{ and } \sum^{n}_{k=j}\binom{2n}{n+k}\frac{2k+1}{n+k+1}= \binom{2n}{n+j}. \]