Reduced QR factorization: Rank of A equals rank of $\hat{R}$

linear algebramatrix decomposition

Let $A$ be an $m \times n$ matrix and let $A = \hat{Q} \hat{R}$ be the reduced QR factorization of $A$ such that $\hat{Q}$ is an $m \times n$ matrix with orthonormal columns and $\hat{R}$ is an an $n \times n$ matrix that is upper triangular.

Question: Is it true that rank$(A)$ = rank$(\hat{R})$? I know this to be true when $A$, $Q$ and $R$ are all square. Does this hold in the reduced $QR$ case though?

Best Answer

Yes. Let $m \geq n$ and note that $\mathrm{rank}(\hat{Q}) = n$ since its columns are orthonormal. Thus $\mathrm{rank}(\hat{R}) = \mathrm{rank}(\hat{Q}\hat{R})$.