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numerics - How to make the computer consider two numbers equal up to a certain precision



My problem is that I have a matrix A and the computer says is not Hermitian (self-adjoint). Then I check which elements make A be not Hermitian by calculating:


B=A-ConjugateTranspose[A]

In case A is Hermitian, this difference should be zero. What I get is that A is not Hermitian, but the terms I get in matrix B all are smaller than 10^(-15).


So how can I fix it at the beggining of the code, Mathematica to consider two numbers equal, up to 10^(-10) precision for example, that is it to consider:



0.00000000010 = 0.00000000012



or saying it in an alternative way, I want Mathematica to consider the following matrix Hermitian:


C={{0,I*1.1^(-10)},{-I*1.2^(-10),0}}


throughout the whole code.



Answer



You can check to see if the difference is less than the desired amount, and if so, to force it to be symmetric:


c = {{0, I 1.1*10^(-10)}, {-I 1.2*10^(-10), 0}}; 
cOut = If[Abs[Total[c - ConjugateTranspose[c], 2]] < 10^(-10),
1/2 (c + ConjugateTranspose[c]),c]

This returns cOut which is a symmetrized version of c if c is close to Hermetian and returns c otherwise (i..e, if it really isn't Hermetian).


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