[Math] Find an orthonormal basis for W and $W^{\perp}$

linear algebra

Consider $\mathbb{C}^3$ with the standard inner product (that is, the dot product), and let $W = \text{span} \{(1, 0, 1), (i, i, i)\}$.
(a) Find an orthonormal basis for $W$.
(b) Find an orthonormal basis for $W^{\perp}$.

I did (a) using Gram Schmidt, and got $\{(1/\sqrt2, 0 , 1/\sqrt2), (0, 1, 0)\}$ as an orthonormal basis for W.

For (b) I wasn't sure what to do.
I set $W^{\perp} = (a, b, c)$.
Then, $(a, b, c)^*(1, 0, 1) = 0$ and $(a, b, c)^*(i, i, i) = 0$.
From that it results that $a = -c$ and $b = 0$.

This is where I got stuck. My question is was my answer to (a) correct? For (b), where do I go from there?

Best Answer

Yes, your answer to (a) is correct. Your conclusions for (b) are also correct. You just need to pick values for $a$ and $c$. You know already now that $W^\perp = (a,0,-a)$, so you just need to pick a value for $a$ to make the vector normalized, which from (a) you should know is $1/\sqrt 2$, so $W^\perp$ is spanned by $(1/\sqrt 2,0,-1/\sqrt 2)$.

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