Matrices with prescribed Ritz values

On the way to establishing a commutative analog to the Gelfand–Kirillov theorem in Lie theory, Kostant and Wallach produced a decomposition of M(n) which we will describe in the language of linear algebra. The “Ritz values” of a matrix are the eigenvalues of its leading principal submatrices of order m=1,2,…,n. There is a unique unit upper Hessenberg matrix H with those eigenvalues. For real symmetric matrices with interlacing Ritz values, we extend their analysis to allow eigenvalues at successive levels to be equal. We also decide whether given Ritz values can come from a tridiagonal matrix.