Powers of defective matrices from diagonalizable dilations (Q2682856)

This article deals with the way of completing a Jordan cell \(M\) of size \(n\) for an eigenvalue \(\lambda\) into a square matrix \(\widetilde{M}\) of size \(2n-1\) which is diagonalizable with eigenvalues \(\lambda\) (of multiplicity \(n\)) and \(\lambda+1\) (of multiplicity \(n-1\)), so that \(M\) is the lower-right submatrix of \(\widetilde{M}\). The authors give explicit formulas for the powers of \(\widetilde{M}\) (in terms of blocks) and compute how the lower-right block of \(\widetilde{M}^k\) is a perturbation of \(M^k\), when \(k\) is a positive integer. Corresponding results for negative integers, and more generally for analytic functions, are also given. The reader must beware that the methods used to compute the powers are far from optimal, since the authors neglect the geometric viewpoint of eigenprojections (which would have greatly simplified the computation of all the blocks with the exception of the lower ones). Moreover, there are many typos in the proof of Theorem 6 (at the bottom of page 214 and the top of page 215), making the proof difficult to read. Finally, as far as the generalization to analytic matrix functions is concerned, the assumptions on the function are not clearly stated, and the last formula for the logarithm is not supported by the proof of Theorem 7 because of issues with the radius of convergence of the logarithmic series.