On the accuracy of the Gerschgorin circle theorem for bounding the spread of a real symmetric matrix (Q1073873)

Let A be a matrix and s(A) its spread. It is easy to derive a bound for the spread from the Gerschgorin circle theorem. Denote this bound by b(A). This paper studies the ratio \(g(A)=b(A)/s(A).\) It is shown that g(A) can, in general, be arbitrarily large. This is not the case if we confine ourselves to symmetric real matrices. Let \(g_ n\) be the maximum of g(A) when A runs over the set of \(n\times n\) real symmetric matrices. Then \(\sqrt{n-1}\leq g_ n\leq \sqrt{n}.\) Some results for banded and sparse matrices are also given.