Geometric Numerical Integration and Applications





 


An optimized algorithm for computing the exponential of skew-Hermitian matrices  


In the paper




a new algorithm is proposed to approximate in a very efficient way the exponential of skew-Hermitian matrices. It is based on the evaluation of Chebyshev polynomial of matrices. For problems of the form exp(-i A), with A a real and symmetric matrix, an improved version is presented which allows one to compute the sine and cosine of A with a much reduced computational cost.
We have implemented the procedure as different Matlab functions, which in any case offer a superior efficiency than the standard function expm.


Additional information is collected here, and the codes are the following: