Equivalent conditions for noncentral generalized Laplacianness and independence of matrix quadratic forms

Let Y be an n×p multivariate normal random matrix with general covariance Σ_Y and W be a symmetric matrix. In the present article, the property that a matrix quadratic form Y^′WY is distributed as a difference of two independent (noncentral) Wishart random matrices is called the (noncentral) generalized Laplacianness (GL). Then a set of algebraic results are obtained which will give the necessary and sufficient conditions for the (noncentral) GL of a matrix quadratic form. Further, two extensions of Cochran’s theorem concerning the (noncentral) GL and independence of a family of matrix quadratic forms are developed.