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Consider a surface defined by the form

$$ x^\text{T}Ax+b^\text{T}x+c=0, $$

where $A\in\mathbb{R}^{n\times{n}}$ is non-zero symmetric positive semi-definite, $b\in\mathbb{R}^n$ and $c\in\mathbb{R}$. Suppose that $\det(A)=0$, and that $$ \det\begin{pmatrix}A&b\\b^\text{T}&c\end{pmatrix}\neq0. $$

Question 1: Does the set $S=\{x:x^\text{T}Ax+b^\text{T}x+c=0\}$ have a well-defined notion of vertex and axis of symmetry (analogous to a parabola in 2D)?

Question 2: If so, is there a way to express the vertex and axis of symmetry in terms of the data $(A,b,c)$?

I seems like most of the work on these problems is done in 2D and 3D. I looked here but unfortunately it wasn't very helpful.

David M.
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  • What about the link is unhelpful? It seems to contain everything that I think would be a good answer to this question. – KReiser Jul 07 '18 at 00:56
  • @KReiser Thanks for responding. The article was helpful for classifying the quadric, but it doesn’t provide info about paraboloids (beyond classifying when a quadric is a paraboloid). In particular, it talks a lot about central conics, but a paraboloid isn’t a central conic (I think?) – David M. Jul 07 '18 at 01:11
  • To he more particular: it doesn’t say anything about an axis of symmetry (unless I read right past it somehow) – David M. Jul 07 '18 at 01:12

1 Answers1

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If $A$ is nonzero symmetric positive semi-definite and noninvertible, it may be written as $SDS^{-1}$ for $S$ orthogonal and $D$ a diagonal matrix with diagonal entries $d_1,\cdots,d_k,0,\cdots,0$ for $d_i >0$ and $k>0$. Use $x_1,\cdots,x_n$ for coordinates before diagonalization and $w_1,\cdots,w_n$ for coordinates after diagonalization.

Write $A_Q = \begin{pmatrix} A & \frac{1}{2}b \\ \frac{1}{2} b^T & c \end{pmatrix}$ and write $S' = \begin{pmatrix} S & 0 \\ 0 & 1\end{pmatrix}$. Then $S'A_QS'^{-1} = \begin{pmatrix} D & \frac{1}{2} b' \\ \frac{1}{2} b'^T & c \end{pmatrix}$ where $b' = Sb$.

If by analogy with the case of $y=ax^2+bx+c$ with $a>0$, we take the most symmetric region of the graph (previously: minimum of this equation, which is bad because of things like the graph of z=x^2+y) to be the vertex, we find something interesting: it is no longer necessary for our vertex to be a point. Instead, it's the intersection of a codimension $k$ vector space shifted by $b'$ with our graph - that makes it a codimension $k+1$ subset. This vertex is in fact everything on our graph that satisfies the $k$ equations $w_i = \frac{-b'_i}{2d_i}$ for $d_i\neq 0$. The "axis of symmetry" is just the linear space determined by the equations above. A fun extra fact is that the symmetries of this higher-dimensional parabola are exactly the group $\prod_{\lambda \neq 0} O(\dim A_\lambda)$ where the product is taken over $\lambda$ in the eigenvalues of $A$ and each factor acts on the eigenspace $A_\lambda$.

I don't as of yet see a good way to phrase the axis of symmetry in terms of just $A,b$ owing to the fact that $A$ is explicitly non-invertible. Perhaps there is something to do with taking a maximal-rank minor, inverting it, and applying that to $b$ (or maybe a pseudo-inverse?), but I don't see how to make that work yet.

Edit 7/8 2304 GMT: replaced "minimum" in paragraph 3 with "most symmetric region" because of examples with no minimum.

KReiser
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  • Thanks for this very thoughtful answer. I am still thinking about all the details, but I see that some of my geometric intuition was misleading me. Can the “axis of symmetry” (really a “subspace of symmetry”) reduce to a single point? It seems that it has to be at least $k=1$ dimensional. Am I following that correctly? (Thanks again) – David M. Jul 10 '18 at 00:17
  • The "axis of symmetry" must always be at least one dimensional, which resembles the case of $y=ax^2+bx+c$ very closely - the axis of symmetry is the vertical line through the vertex, so it's 1-dimensional. On the other hand, the "vertex" can certainly be a point - it's the (transverse) intersection of something of codimension $k$ with a graph that's codimension 1, so if $k=n-1$ (which is legal), the vertex can be $k+1=n-1+1=n$ codimensional, or a point. – KReiser Jul 10 '18 at 00:30
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    Oh of course--I wasn't reading carefully. Thank you for clarifying re: the vertex. That makes sense. So the notion of a "vertex" is potentially murky, in the sense that it may not be a point (this is admittedly semantics--we'd have to define "vertex"). I will keep thinking! – David M. Jul 10 '18 at 00:34
  • @DavidM. Is there anything else I might add that would let you accept this answer? – KReiser Jul 12 '18 at 17:46
  • Oops sorry—I will gladly award you the bounty. I think I am going to leave the question as unanswered to see if anyone comes along with an answer to question 2 (expressing in terms of the data). – David M. Jul 12 '18 at 17:50