Subsection LNS Left Null Space

Definition LNS Left Null Space

Suppose $A$ is an $m\times n$ matrix. Then the left null space is defined as $\lns{A}=\nsp{\transpose{A}}\subseteq\complex{m}$.

The left null space will not feature prominently in the sequel, but we can explain its name and connect it to row operations. Suppose $\vect{y}\in\lns{A}$. Then by Definition LNS, $\transpose{A}\vect{y}=\zerovector$. We can then write \begin{align*} \transpose{\zerovector} &=\transpose{\left(\transpose{A}\vect{y}\right)} &&\knowl{./knowls/definition.LNS.knowl}{\text{Definition LNS}}\\ &=\transpose{\vect{y}}\transpose{\left(\transpose{A}\right)} &&\knowl{./knowls/theorem.MMT.knowl}{\text{Theorem MMT}}\\ &=\transpose{\vect{y}}A &&\knowl{./knowls/theorem.TT.knowl}{\text{Theorem TT}} \end{align*}

The product $\transpose{\vect{y}}A$ can be viewed as the components of $\vect{y}$ acting as the scalars in a linear combination of the rows of $A$. And the result is a “row vector”, $\transpose{\zerovector}$ that is totally zeros. When we apply a sequence of row operations to a matrix, each row of the resulting matrix is some linear combination of the rows. These observations tell us that the vectors in the left null space are scalars that record a sequence of row operations that result in a row of zeros in the row-reduced version of the matrix. We will see this idea more explicitly in the course of proving Theorem FS.

Example LNS Left null space
Sage LNS Left Null Spaces
(in context)