Definiteness of Gram matrix
Definition 1 Definiteness of a matrix Let $A$ be $n \times n$ real symmetric matrix, and column vector $x \in \mathbb{R}^n$. - $A$ is positive (negative) definite if $x^TAx > 0 \ (x^TAx < 0),\ \forall x \neq 0$. - $A$ is positive (negative) semidefinite if $x^TAx \geq 0 \ (x^TAx \leq 0),\ \forall x \in \mathbb{R}^n $, and $x^TAx = 0$ for at least one $ x \neq 0$. - $A$ is indefinite if $x^TAx$ takes on both positive and negative values (with different, non-zero $x$'s) Definition 2 Gram matrix The Gram matrix of a set of vectors $v_1, \dots, v_n$ in an inner product space is the Hermitan matrix of inner products, whose entries are given by (1). $$ \begin{align} G_{ij} = \langle v_i, v_j \rangle \tag{1} \\ \end{align} $$ For finite dimensional real vectors in $\mathbb{R}^n$ with the usual Euclidean dot product, the Gram matrix $G$ is simply $G=V^TV$, where the column of V is $v_i$. Theorem 1 The symmetric matrix $G$ is a Gram matrix if and only