In case you didn't see my reply to your first message, it is pasted below:
----- There is no "sign convention" regarding eigenvectors, since if v is an eigenvector of a matrix, any scalar multiple of v is also an eigenvector. gsl_eigen_hermv guarantees that the eigenvectors are normalized to unit magnitude, but of course the negative of the computed vector is still a valid eigenvector with unit magnitude. I suspect you will find that any eigenvector software will exhibit the same behavior. There really is no way to determine a standard sign convention for eigenvectors. ----- Your vector v8 is a perfectly legitimate eigenvector of the matrix. Patrick On 02/18/2014 10:43 AM, Walter Hahn wrote:
Dear all, a few weeks ago, I have sent you this bug report already without giving you enough information. Now, I would like to provide the missing information and correct some statements. After using the procedure gsl_eigen_hermv to diagonalize a matrix, I suspect that the sign convention for the eigenvectors should be reconsidered. More specifically, I diagonalize a matrix which has only a few non-zero entries, namely at m(2i,2i+1) and m(2i+1,2i) for all i. In my case, I diagonalize a 8x8 matrix with real entries, e.g. 1.0. The eigenvectors should be of the following form (not normalized): v1=(1,1,0,0,0....) v2=(-1,1,0,0,0,...), other eigenvectors can be obtained by shifting the non-zero coefficients of v1 and v2 by two places to the right. However, diagonalizing the 8x8 matrix described above, I obtain the eigenvectors as described above except the last one which is v8=(0,0,0,0,0,0,1,-1) instead of (0,0,0,0,0,0,-1,1), i.e., multiplied with (-1). Therefore, I think that the sign convention is either not implemented correctly or the convention used is not broad enough. Please find in the attachment to this e-mail a simple compilable code which demonstrates this problem. I have checked the described results for GSL versions 1.15 and 1.16. Kind regards, Walter
