An implicit QR algorithm for symmetric semiseparable matrices

The QR algorithm is one of the classical methods to compute the eigendecomposition of a matrix. If it is applied on a dense n x n matrix, this algorithm requires O(n^3) operations per iteration step. To reduce this complexity for a sytmmetric matrix to O(n), the original matrix is first reduced to tridiagonal form using orthogonal similarity transformations. In the report (Report TW360, May 2003) a reduction from a symmetric matrix into a similar semiseparable one is described. In this paper a QR algorithm to compute the eigenvalues of semiseparable matrices is designed where each iteration step requires O(n) operations. Hence, combined with the reduction to semiseparable form, the eigenvalues of symmetric matrices can be computed via intermediate semiseparable matrices, instead of tridiagonal ones. The eigenvectors of the intermediate semiseparable matrix will be computed by applying inverse iteration to this matrix. This will be achieved by using an O(n) system solver, for semiseparable matrices. A combination of the previous steps leads to an algorithm for computing the eigenvalue decompositions of semiseparable matrices. Combined with the reduction of a symmetric matrix towards semiseparable fortri, this algorithm can also be used to calculate the eigenvalue decomposition of symmetric matrices. The presented algorithm has the same order of complexity as the tridiagonal approach, but has larger lower order terms. Numerical experiments illustrate the complexity and the numerical accuracy of the proposed method.