Detection of Hopf points by counting sectors in the complex plane (Q2564475)

An eigenvalue of a matrix \(A\) is called a Hopf value if it is purely imagine and there is an eigenvalue conjugated to it. The authors describe a technique for detecting Hopf values based on the evolution of the Schur complement of \(A-zI\) in a bordered extension of \(A-zI\) where \(z\) varies along the positive imaginary axis of the complex plane. The method is applicable to large sparse matrices arising by discretizing some boundary value problems. The authors compare the efficiency of the method numerically with some others.