We will prove a more general result by induction (Proof Technique
I). Then the theorem will be true as a special case. We will carefully state this result as a proposition indexed by
Suppose that
is an
matrix whose entries are complex numbers or linear polynomials in the variable
of the form
where
is a complex number. Suppose further that there are exactly
entries that contain
and that no row or column contains more than one such entry. Then, when
is a polynomial in
of degree
with leading coefficient
and when
is a polynomial in
of degree
or less.
Base Case: Suppose
is a
matrix. Then its determinant is equal to the lone entry (
Definition DM). When
the entry is of the form
a polynomial in
of degree
with leading coefficient
When
then
and the entry is simply a complex number, a polynomial of degree
So
is true.
Induction Step: Assume
is true, and that
is an
matrix with
entries of the form
There are two cases to consider.
Suppose
Then every row and every column will contain an entry of the form
Suppose that for the first row, this entry is in column
Compute the determinant of
by an expansion about this first row (
Definition DM). The term associated with entry
of this row will be of the form
The submatrix
is an
matrix with
terms of the form
no more than one per row or column. By the induction hypothesis,
will be a polynomial in
of degree
with coefficient
So this entire term is then a polynomial of degree
with leading coefficient
The remaining terms (which constitute the sum that is the determinant of
) are products of complex numbers from the first row with cofactors built from submatrices that lack the first row of
and lack some column of
other than column
As such, these submatrices are
matrices with
entries of the form
no more than one per row or column. Applying the induction hypothesis, we see that these terms are polynomials in
of degree
or less. Adding the single term from the entry in column
with all these others, we see that
is a polynomial in
of degree
and leading coefficient
The second case occurs when
Now there is a row of
that does not contain an entry of the form
We consider the determinant of
by expanding about this row (
Theorem DER), whose entries are all complex numbers. The cofactors employed are built from submatrices that are
matrices with either
or
entries of the form
no more than one per row or column. In either case,
and we can apply the induction hypothesis to see that the determinants computed for the cofactors are all polynomials of degree
or less. Summing these contributions to the determinant of
yields a polynomial in
of degree
or less, as desired.
Definition CP tells us that the characteristic polynomial of an
matrix is the determinant of a matrix having exactly
entries of the form
no more than one per row or column. As such we can apply
to see that the characteristic polynomial has degree