Roots of Characteristic Polynomial Sequences in Iterative Block Cyclic Reductions

The block cyclic reduction method is a finite-step direct method used for solving linear systems with block tridiagonal coefficient matrices. It iteratively uses transformations to reduce the number of non-zero blocks in coefficient matrices. With repeated block cyclic reductions, non-zero off-diagonal blocks in coefficient matrices incrementally leave the diagonal blocks and eventually vanish after a finite number of block cyclic reductions. In this paper, we focus on the roots of characteristic polynomials of coefficient matrices that are repeatedly transformed by block cyclic reductions. We regard each block cyclic reduction as a composition of two types of matrix transformations, and then attempt to examine changes in the existence range of roots. This is a block extension of the idea presented in our previous papers on simple cyclic reductions. The property that the roots are not very scattered is a key to accurately solve linear systems in floating-point arithmetic. We clarify that block cyclic reductions do not disperse roots, but rather narrow their distribution, if the original coefficient matrix is symmetric positive or negative definite.