TY - GEN A1 - Weber, Marcus T1 - Eigenvalues of non-reversible Markov chains – A case study N2 - Finite reversible Markov chains are characterized by a transition matrix P that has real eigenvalues and pi-orthogonal eigenvectors, where pi is the stationary distribution of P. This means, that a transition matrix with complex eigenvalues corresponds to a non-reversible Markov chain. This observation leads to the question, whether the imaginary part of that eigendecomposition corresponds to or indicates the “pattern” of the nonreversibility. This article shows that the direct relation between imaginary parts of eigendecompositions and the non-reversibility of a transition matrix is not given. It is proposed to apply the Schur decomposition of P instead of the eigendecomposition in order to characterize its nonreversibility. T3 - ZIB-Report - 17-13 KW - non-reversible KW - transition matrix KW - detailed balance Y1 - 2017 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-62191 SN - 1438-0064 ER -