Some nilpotent, tridiagonal matrices with a special sign pattern (Q417539)

A sign pattern is an \(n\times n\) matrix whose entries are chosen from \(\{ -, 0, + \}\). A real matrix \(A\) has a sign pattern \(S\) if in positions corresponding to \(-\) in \(S\), the entry in \(A\) is negative, in positions corresponding to \(+\) in \(S\), the entry in \(A\) is positive and the rest of the entries in \(A\) are \(0\). A sign pattern \(S\) is called a spectrally arbitrary pattern, if for each real monic polynomial \(r(x)\) of degree \(n\), there exists a matrix sign pattern \(S\) and with characteristic polynomial \(r(x)\). In this paper, the authors establish the existence of a nilpotent matrix \(A_{n}\) with sign pattern \(\mathcal{T}_{n}\), which was introduced by [\textit{J. H. Drew, C. R. Johnson, D. D. Olesky} and \textit{P. van den Driessche}, Linear Algebra Appl. 308, No. 1-3, 121--137 (2000; Zbl 0957.15012)], for \(n\geq 2\). This paper does not directly address the issue of whether or not \(\mathcal{T}_{n}\) is a spectrally arbitrary pattern. The authors prove that a certain matrix is nilpotent by constructing a change of basis matrix that makes it strictly upper triangular. They do this using Chebyshev polynomials of the first kind \(\mathcal{T}_{n}(x)\).