First, we find the eigenvalues of
Hence, the equation becomes
Therefore, our eigenvalues for are and We note that we do not have three distinct eigenvalues, but we proceed as in the previous example.
Case 1. For the equation becomes
We can row reduce the matrix of coefficients to
The matrix equation is then equivalent to the equations Therefore, the solution set, or eigenspace, corresponding to consists of vectors of the form
Therefore is an eigenvector corresponding to the eigenvalue and can be used for our first column of
Before we continue we make the observation: is a subspace of with basis and
Case 2. If then the equation becomes
Without the aid of any computer technology, it should be clear that all three equations that correspond to this matrix equation are equivalent to or Notice that can take on any value, so any vector of the form
will solve the matrix equation.
We note that the solution set contains two independent variables, and Further, note that we cannot express the eigenspace as a linear combination of a single vector as in Case 1. However, it can be written as
We can replace any vector in a basis is with a nonzero multiple of that vector. Simply for aesthetic reasons, we will multiply the second vector that generates by 2. Therefore, the eigenspace is a subspace of with basis and so
What this means with respect to the diagonalization process is that gives us both Column 2 and Column 3 the diagonalizing matrix. The order is not important so we have
The reader can verify (see Exercise 5 of this section) that and