Sturm and Sylvester algorithms revisited via tridiagonal determinantal representations (Q989047)

The author shows that the classical Sturm and Sylvester methods for counting the number of real roots of a univariate polynomial \(p(x)\) can be interpreted as algorithms generating canonical tridiagonal realizations of \(p(x)\). A related question is the following: given a polynomial \(p(x)\) with real roots, construct a symmetric matrix \(A\) such that \(p(x)=\det(xI-A)\) where \(I\) is the identity matrix. Whereas a solution of this problem was previously available, the author extends this construction to the case that \(p(x)\) has real or complex roots, and the determinantal realization becomes \(p(x)=k\det(xJ-A)\) where \(k\) is a constant and \(J\) is a signature matrix with \(\pm 1\) along the diagonal. The author also derives constructively a determinantal realization \(\det(D)p(x) =\det(xD-A)\) where \(D\) is diagonal and \(A\) is tridiagonal symmetric, both with entries in the field of the coefficients of \(p(x)\), so that no algebraic extension is required. The paper is clearly written and explicit numerical examples are provided.