Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 1991.

Thesis (Honors)--College of William and Mary, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 39). Also available via the World Wide Web.

An isospectral algorithm is one which manipulates a matrix without changing its spectrum. In this thesis we study three interrelated examples of isospectral algorithms, all pertaining to Toeplitz matrices in some fashion, and one directly involving orthogonal polynomials. The first set of algorithms we study come from discretising a continuous isospectral flow designed to converge to a symmetric Toeplitz matrix with prescribed eigenvalues. We analyse constrained, isospectral gradient flow approaches and an isospectral flow studied by Chu in 1993. The second set of algorithms compute the spectral measure of a Jacobi operator, which is the weight function for the associated orthogonal polynomials and can include a singular part. The connection coefficients matrix, which converts between different bases of orthogonal polynomials, is shown to be a useful new tool in the spectral theory of Jacobi operators. When the Jacobi operator is a finite rank perturbation of Toeplitz, here called pert-Toeplitz, the connection coefficients matrix produces an explicit, computable formula for the spectral measure. Generalisation to trace class perturbations is also considered. The third algorithm is the infinite dimensional QL algorithm. In contrast to the finite dimensional case in which the QL and QR algorithms are equivalent, we find that the QL factorisations do not always exist, but that it is possible, at least in the case of pert-Toeplitz Jacobi operators, to implement shifts to generate rapid convergence of the top left entry to an eigenvalue. A fascinating novelty here is that the infinite dimensional matrices are computed in their entirety and stored in tailor made data structures. Lastly, the connection coefficients matrix and the orthogonal transformations computed in the QL iterations can be combined to transform these pert-Toeplitz Jacobi operators isospectrally to a canonical form. This allows us to implement a functional calculus for pert-Toeplitz Jacobi operators.