Partial orders and Jordan normal form

Consideration is given to the relation between the structure of the acyclic binary relation and the adjacency matrix of its corresponding graph. In this case, the existing methods for studying the binary relations and their corresponding graphs in terms of the spectrum, that is, the set of eigenvalues, of the adjacency matrix are inapplicable because for the acyclic relations this matrix is nilpotent and its spectrum is identically zero. Therefore, a more refined characteristic of the matrix is required. The present paper considers the Jordan normal form (JNF) as such.