Applications of partial orderings to the study of positive definiteness, monotonicity, and convergence of iterative methods for linear systems.

Most of the known results concerning convergence of iterative methods for solving linear systems involve either positive definiteness or monotonicity. In this paper a new concept, called K-semipositivity, is introduced, which provides a link between convergence theory, monotonicity, and positive definiteness. By using this concept, together with partial orderings in Euclidean n-space, several new convergence theorems are proved. Application to Jacobi's methods and the theory of regular splittings shows the usefulness of these new results.