The determinant of a Cauchy matrix is clearly a rational fraction in the parameters and . If the sequences were not injective, the determinant would vanish, and tends to infinity if some tends to . A subset of its zeros and poles are thus known. The fact is that there are no more zeros and poles:
The determinant of a square Cauchy matrix A is known as a Cauchy determinant and can be given explicitly as
(Schechter 1959, eqn 4; Cauchy 1841, p. 154, eqn. 10).
It is always nonzero, and thus all square Cauchy matrices are invertible. The inverse A−1 = B = [bij] is given by
(Schechter 1959, Theorem 1)
where Ai(x) and Bi(x) are the Lagrange polynomials for and , respectively. That is,
A matrix C is called Cauchy-like if it is of the form
Defining X=diag(xi), Y=diag(yi), one sees that both Cauchy and Cauchy-like matrices satisfy the displacement equation
(with for the Cauchy one). Hence Cauchy-like matrices have a common displacement structure, which can be exploited while working with the matrix. For example, there are known algorithms in literature for
TiIo Finck, Georg Heinig, and Karla Rost: "An Inversion Formula and Fast Algorithms for Cauchy-Vandermonde Matrices", Linear Algebra and its Applications, vol.183 (1993), pp.179-191.