Maxima Function
ncharpoly (M, x)
Returns the characteristic polynomial of the matrix M
with respect to x. This is an alternative to Maxima's charpoly
.
ncharpoly
works by computing traces of powers of the given matrix,
which are known to be equal to sums of powers of the roots of the
characteristic polynomial. From these quantities the symmetric
functions of the roots can be calculated, which are nothing more than
the coefficients of the characteristic polynomial. charpoly
works by
forming the determinant of x * ident [n] - a
. Thus ncharpoly
wins,
for example, in the case of large dense matrices filled with integers,
since it avoids polynomial arithmetic altogether.
load ("nchrpl")
loads this file.