Canonical forms for congruence of matrices and \(T\)-palindromic matrix pencils: a tribute to H. W. Turnbull and A. C. Aitken (Q258866)

Two well-known actions of \(\mathrm{GL}(n,C)\) on complex \(n \times n\) matrices are \( A\mapsto PAP-1\) and \(A \mapsto PAPT\), giving rise to the concepts of similar and congruent matrices, respectively. For the similarity relation there is the well-known Jordan canonical form (JCF), but for the congruence relation, there is no single generally accepted canonical form. One such form was introduced by \textit{H. W. Turnbull} and \textit{A. C. Aitken} in their book [An introduction to the theory of canonical matrices. London: Blackie \& Son, Ltd (1932; Zbl 0005.19303)] dating from 1932, involving six block-types (the JCF has just one). In [Linear Algebra Appl. 416, No. 2--3, 1010--1032 (2006; Zbl 1098.15004)], \textit{R. A. Horn} and \textit{V. V. Sergeichuk} proposed another canonical form for the congruence of complex \(n \times n\) matrices, involving three block-types. These canonical forms were formulated more generally in terms of the congruence of pencils. The surprising fact is that practically none of the papers on this topic mentions the pioneering work of Turnbull and Aitken (T\&A). In this paper, the author draws attention to their work and investigates similarities between the two canonical forms and in particular the relationship between their blocktypes. One of the advantages of the T\&A canonical form of a matrix is that it immediately yields the spectral structure of the associated \(T\)-palindromic pencil, which is not the case with the Horn and Sergeichuk (H\&S) canonical form. Here the author shows how this can be done for the H\&S canonical form.