A companion matrix approach to the study of zeros and critical points of a polynomial (Q2491685)

The authors introduce a new type of companion matrix (termed derivative companion matrix) for studying problems involving the zeros and critical points of complex polynomials. The authors' approach is based on the following result (Theorem 1.1) which provides an effective tool for the analysis of the aforementioned problems by the direct application of matrix theory. Let \(p(z):=a_n\prod_{i=1}^n(z-z_i)\) be a polynomial of degree \(n\geq 2\). Let \(D= \text{diag} (z_1,\dots, z_{n-1})\) denote the diagonal matrix of order \(n-1\). Let \(I\) denote the identity matrix of order \(n-1\) and \(J\) denote the \((n-1)\times (n-1)\) matrix all of whose entries are 1. Then the critical points of \(p(z)\) are the eigenvalues of the matrix \(D\left(I-\frac {1}{n} J\right)+\frac {z_n}{ n} J.\) The paper includes a number of significant applications of this theorem. In particular, the authors prove a higher-order version of \textit{I. J. Schoenberg}'s conjecture [Am. Math. Mon. 93, 8--13 (1986; Zbl 0627.30001)] that was proposed by \textit{M. G. de Bruin} and \textit{A. Sharma} [J. Comput. Appl. Math. 105, No. 1--2, 221--228 (1999; Zbl 0945.30003)].