On 11/20/19 9:53 PM, Earl Fairall wrote:
> 
> You successfully answered all my questions; however, you now have me curious 
> why the physics community would want to know all (or a larger portion of) the 
> eigenvalues.  If they're using these methods to somehow characterize the wide 
> frequency range of light or radiation, I can imagine that would get nasty 
> very 
> quickly!

In the context of the calculations that these people cared about, their 
matrices were 3x3 or 8x8 or something similarly small. Their matrices are not 
finite-dimensional approximations of infinite-dimensional operators, and so 
the eigenvalues have physical reality. On the other hand, in the finite 
element context, our matrices are approximations of infinite-dimensional 
operators, and so only those matrix eigenvalues that approximate operator 
eigenvalues well have physical relevance -- these are generally the first few 
(dozens, hundreds) smallest or largest eigenvalues of a matrix.

Best
  W.

-- 
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Wolfgang Bangerth          email:                 [email protected]
                            www: http://www.math.colostate.edu/~bangerth/

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