Hermitian Symmetry on a Hilbert Space—Its Applications to Some Asymmetric Phenomena

The purpose of this paper is threefold. One is to revisit the Hermitian form model (HFM) with Hermitian symmetry proposed by Chino and Shiraiwa (1993), which uncovers the latent Hilbert space structure or the indefinite metric space structure, given the asymmetric similarity matrix (ASM) among objects, and another is to explain how to interpret the configuration of objects embedded in these spaces. The final goal of this paper is to show what kinds of information are obtained by applying HFM to empirical and hypothetical ASMs. Results of applications of HFM to two empirical ASMs suggest that some possible asymmetric structures among objects exist, which might not have been found empirically. The result of application of the HFM to a hypothetical ASM uncovers interesting latent space structures among objects.