Article contents
Prime matrices
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 August 2016
Extract
A matrix in a set M of matrices is prime (naturally enough) if it is not the product of any other matrices in the set. We thought we would look for the prime matrices in the set M of all 2 x 2 matrices with entries in the nonnegative integers and with determinant 1. To our great surprise we discovered that:
THEOREM. In M the matrices
are the only primes, and any member of M (except I) can be uniquely factorised into a product of those two.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Mathematical Association 1986
- 4
- Cited by