Orthogonal invariants of a matrix of order four and applications (Q2570180)

A matrix is tridiagonal if all its entries are 0, except those in the 3 main diagonals. The authors address the following questions: which \(4\times 4\) real (respectively complex) matrices are orthogonally similar to a tridiagonal matrix? To this end, they explicitly compute the rings of invariants of the actions by conjugation of \(\text{O}_4(\mathbb C)\) and \(\text{SO}_4(\mathbb C)\) on the space of traceless matrices of order 4 -- that is, \(s\ell(4, \mathbb C)\). Then they give some partial answers to those questions, for instance that there are matrices which are not orthogonally similar to a tridiagonal matrix.