Pentadiagonal Matrices and an Application to the Centered MA(1) Stationary Gaussian Process

Abstract

In this work, we study the properties of a pentadiagonal symmetric matrix with perturbed corners. More specifically, we present explicit expressions for characterizing when this matrix is non-negative and positive definite in two special and important cases. We also give a closed expression for the determinant of such matrices. Previous works present the determinant in a recurrence form but not in an explicit one. As an application of these results, we also study the limiting cumulant generating function associated to the bivariate sequence of random vectors (n^{-1} (\sum_{k=1}^n X_k^2 , \sum_{k=2}^n X_k X_{k-1})_{n in N}, when (X_n)_{n in N} is the centered stationary moving average process of first order with Gaussian innovations. We exhibit the explicit expression of this limiting cumulant generating function. Finally, we present three examples illustrating the techniques studied here.