Hadamards Inequality

Let a1 , a2 , . . . , aN be (column) vectors in RN and let

A = a1 a2 . . . aN )
be the corresponding N N real matrix. Then Hadamards inequality asserts that
| det A|

(1)

N
Y

kan k,

N =1

where k k is the Euclidean norm on vectors in RN . Perhaps the simplest proof of this
inequality is as follows.
By the Gram-Schmidt process we can establish the existence of an orthonormal basis
b1 , b2 , . . . , bN for RN such that




(2)
spanR a1 , a2 , . . . , an = spanR b1 , b2 , . . . , bn
for each n = 1, 2, . . . , N . Write
B = b1 b2 . . . bN )
for the corresponding N N real, orthogonal matrix. By orthonormality each vector
in RN has an expansion as
N
X
h, bn ibn ,
=
n=1

and then
2

kk =

N
X

|h, bn i|2 .

n=1

However, (2) implies that each vector am has a shorter expansion of the form
(3)

am =

m
X

ham , bn ibn .

n=1

Alternatively, let C = (ckl ) be the N N , upper triangular matrix defined by

ckl = hal , bk i if 1 k l,
and
ckl = 0 if l < k N.
1

Then it is easy to check that (3) can be restated as

A = BC.
Again using the fact that B has orthonormal columns and the fact that C is upper
triangular, we get

2
det A = det AT A = det C T B T BC

2
= det C T C = det C
=

N
Y

|han , bn i|2

n=1

n
N n X
Y

n=1

N
Y

|ham , bn i|2

m=1

kan k2 ,

n=1

which gives (1). This argument also shows that there is equality in Hadamards inequality
if and only if
n
X
2
|han , bn i| =
|ham , bn i|2
m=1

for each n. That is, if and only if

an = han , bn ibn
for each n, and this is equivalent to the vectors an being pairwise orthogonal.