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symbolic solver question
Posted:
Dec 12, 2012 6:04 AM
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Here is my matlab session:
>> syms s a A
>> A = [0 0 -2*a a; 0 0 a -2*a; 1 0 0 0; 0 1 0 0];
>> eig(A)
ans =
(-a)^(1/2)
-(-a)^(1/2)
3^(1/2)*(-a)^(1/2)
-3^(1/2)*(-a)^(1/2)
OK, so far so good.
I asked for the eigenvalues of the matrix A and it shows the 4 eigenvalues that I expected. So then for the sake of understanding the solver, I though I would try to compute the eigenvalues by setting the determinant of (sI-A) equal to zero:
>> solve('det(s*eye(4)-A) = 0',s)
Warning: Explicit solution could not be found.
Why doesn't this work?
After some experimentation I found this works:
>> solve([char(det(s*eye(4)-A)) '= 0'],s)
ans =
(-a)^(1/2)
-(-a)^(1/2)
3^(1/2)*(-a)^(1/2)
-3^(1/2)*(-a)^(1/2)
So as you can see the solver can compute the eigenvalues correctly, but this form of having to convert the determinant to a character array seems kind of awkward. Is that necessary, or is there a simpler way of entering this equation into the solver?
Thanks
~Paul
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