A method used in numerical linear algebra in order to solve a set of linear equations,
where
A is a square matrix and
b is a column vector. In this method, a lower triangular matrix
L and an upper triangular matrix
U are sought such that
For definiteness, the diagonal elements of
L may be taken to be 1. The elements of successive rows of
U and
L may easily be calculated from the defining equations.
Once L and U have been determined, so that
the equation
is solved by
forward substitution. Thereafter the equation
is solved for
x by
backward substitution.
x is then the solution to the original problem.
A variant of the method, the method of LDU decomposition, seeks lower and upper triangular matrices with unit diagonal and a diagonal matrix D, such that
If the matrix
A is symmetric and positive definite, there is an advantage in finding a lower triangular matrix
L such that
(
see transpose). This method is known as
Cholesky decomposition; the diagonal elements of
L are not, in general, unity.