Recursive eigen extrusion: Expanding eigenbasis conjecture

Abstract

Consider $n$ linearly independent vectors in $\mathbb{C}^n$ which form columns of a matrix $A$. The recursive evaluation of eigen directions (normalized eigenvectors) of $A$ is the solution of an eigenvalue problem of the form $A_iX_i=X_iΛ_i$ with $i=0,1,2 \dots$; and here $Λ_i$ is the diagonal matrix of eigenvalues and columns of $X_i$ are the eigenvectors. Note that $A_{i+1}=ϕ(X_i)$ where $ϕ$ normalizes all eigenvectors to unit $\mathcal{L}_2$ norm such that all diagonal elements $[ϕ(X)^\daggerϕ(X)]_{jj}=1$. It is to be proven that for any matrix $A_o$ and $n \leq 7$, the limiting set of matrices $A_i$ with $i \to \infty$ is the set of unitary matrices $U(n)$ with $X_i^\dagger X_i \to I$. Interestingly, this problem also represents a recursive map that maximizes some average distance among a set of $n$ points on the unit $n$-sphere. We first formally pose this conjecture, present extensive numerical results highlighting it, and prove it for special cases.