The structure group and the involutive differential system that characterize the pseudo-group of contact transformations on a jet space are determined.

4 The minimal polynomial of a linear transformation 7 4.1 Existence of the minimal polynomial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 4.2 The minimal polynomial for algebraically closed fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 4.3 The characteristic polynomial and the Cayley–Hamilton theorem . . . . . . . . . . . 9 4.4 Finding the minimal polynomial . . . . . . . . . . . . . ....

A common method to determine the order of minimal realization of a continuous linear time invariant descriptor system is to decompose it into slow and fast subsystems using the Weierstrass canonical form. The Weierstrass decomposition should be avoided because it is generally an ill-conditioned problem that requires many complex calculations especially for high-dimensional systems. The present ...