Exponents of primitive symmetric companion matrices

Abstract

A {\it symmetric companion matrix} is a matrix of the form $A+A^T$ where $A$ is a companion matrix all of whose entries are in $\{0,1\}$ and $A^T$ is the transpose of $A.$ In this paper, we find the total number of primitive and the total number of imprimitive symmetric companion matrices. We establish formulas to compute the exponent of every primitive symmetric companion matrix. Hence the exponent set for the class of primitive symmetric companion matrices is completely characterized. We also obtain the number of primitive symmetric companion matrices with a given exponent for certain cases.

33 pages