Motivated by the analysis of passive control systems, we undertake a detailed perturbation analysis of Hamiltonian matrices that have eigenvalues on the imaginary axis. We construct minimal Hamiltonian perturbations that move and coalesce eigenvalues of opposite sign characteristic to form multiple eigenvalues with mixed sign characteristics, which are then moved from the imaginary axis to specific locations in the complex plane by small Hamiltonian perturbations. We also present a numerical method to compute upper bounds for the minimal perturbations that move all eigenvalues of a given Hamiltonian matrix outside a vertical strip along the imaginary axis.
Structured eigenvalue conditioning and backward error of a class of polynomial eigenvalue problems
(2007)
Characterisations of simple eigenvalues of complex matrix polynomials with *-even/odd and *-palindromic/antipalindromic structures that have the same normwise condition number with respect to structure preserving and arbitrary perturbations are obtained. Here * denotes either the transpose T or the conjugate tranpose *. In the process we obtain formulae for the normwise structured condition number of simple eigenvalues of T-palindromic/antipalindromic and *-even/odd polynomials. Moreover, conditions under which the normwise structured backward error of approximate eigenvalues of such polynomials is equal to the unstructured error are also derived. These lead to complete characterisations of approximate eigenvalues that have the same structured and unstructured backward errors for the *-even/odd and T-even/odd polynomials.
We derive a formula for the backward error of a complex number $\lambda$ when considered as an approximate eigenvalue
of a Hermitian matrix pencil or polynomial with respect to Hermitian perturbations. The same are also obtained for approximate
eigenvalues of matrix pencils and polynomials with related structures like skew-Hermitian, $*$-even and $*$-odd.
Numerical experiments suggest that in many cases there is a significant difference between the backward
errors with respect to perturbations that preserve structure and those with respect to arbitrary perturbations.