# Singular matrix - but SVD works - what does the eigenvalues mean? Find I the “dependent” lines?

please can I ask a bit stupid question? I have a complex matrix A as a set of equations. I wanted to find the solution of Ax=b where b is vector of right-hand side. So I have called zgetrf on A (does LU factorization) and then zgetrs on A and b (solves linear system of LU matrix) from Lapack/MKL. But this ends up with error, zgetrf can't factorize the matrix A and says that it is singular. So I have called SVD on it - zgesvd. And this works. But the eigenvalues of the matrix A are as follows:

(2885.24776463951,8.34234423485148)

(1.41421356237310,1.41421356237310)

(1.41421356237309,0.144427825453540)

(1.257628062933306E-014,0.000000000000000E+000)

(0.000000000000000E+000,0.000000000000000E+000)

(0.000000000000000E+000,0.000000000000000E+000)

(0.000000000000000E+000,0.000000000000000E+000)

(0.000000000000000E+000,0.000000000000000E+000)

Can I find where is the problem for zgetrf to factorize? I think such eigenvalues say that the matrix A is only of rank 4 in spite of having physical dimension 8 x 8... can I estimate which lines are dependent? Thank you very much

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I would say the matrix has rank 3. A singular value of 1e-14 is, for all practical reasons, zero when there are other eigenvalues of size 1 or large. –  Wolfgang Bangerth Feb 13 '13 at 0:57
Hi Wolfgang, this seems me too small as well, unfortunately :( –  lovis Feb 13 '13 at 7:18
This question may be interesting for you as well: scicomp.stackexchange.com/questions/2510/… –  Alexander Feb 13 '13 at 8:55
I'm going to assume you've given us the singular values from SVD, not the eigenvalues (they are related, but not the same). You are right: this means your matrix is rank 4 despite being an 8x8 matrix. The SVD has already given you everything you need: the first four left and right singular vectors are a basis that represents your operator as a 4x4 matrix. If the matrix A is static, then you could transform your whole calculation in to that those bases and proceed with a non-singular matrix. A better idea is probably to use the SVD to form a pseudo-inverse of $A$. Recall the SVD of $A$: $$A = U \Sigma V^*$$ where $U$, $V$ are unitary and $\Sigma$ is diagonal with non-negative values (but some zeros, as in your case). The diagonal elements of $\Sigma$ are ordered and called the singular values. You can construct a pseudo-inverse as: $$A^\dagger = V \Sigma^\dagger U^* \quad \Sigma^\dagger_{ii} = \Sigma_{ii}^{-1} \text{ if } \Sigma_{ii} > 0, \text{ else } 0$$