Consider the system where
The characteristic polynomial of is
The eigenvalue has eigenvector and the eigenvalue has eigenvector Thus, we can find two linearly independent solutions in this case
Since
has multiplicity two and we can find only one linearly independent eigenvector, it is not possible to apply
Proposition 3.9.8 in this case.
If we consider the exponential
where and are linearly independent, our goal is to choose for which the series truncates. That is, we must look for vectors such that If then which means that is an eigenvector. Thus, must be a multiple of in this case. Since we already know that the eigenspace associated with this eigenvector has dimension one and is generated by we must consider higher powers.
Since
we have
The nullspace of this matrix has dimension two. Certainly, is in the nullspace of since it is the nullspace of We wish to find a vector that is not a multiple of the vector that is also in the nullspace of The vector will do. Now our series truncates,
We now have a general solution for our system,