For a partially specified stochastic matrix, we consider the problem of completing it so as to minimize Kemeny’s constant. We prove that for any partially specified stochastic matrix for which the problem is well defined, there is a minimizing completion that is as sparse as possible. We also find the minimum value of Kemeny’s constant in two special cases: when the diagonal has been specified and when all specified entries lie in a common row.

Let A be an F-central simple algebra of degree $m^2=\prod _{i=1}^k p_i^{2\alpha _i}$ and G be a subgroup of the unit group of A such that $F[G]=A$. We prove that if G is a central product of two of its subgroups M and N, then $F[M]\otimes _F F[N]\cong F[G]$. Also, if G is locally nilpotent, then G is a central product of subgroups $H_i$, where $[F[H_i]:F]=p_i^{2\alpha _i}$, $A=F[G]\cong F[H_1]\otimes _F \cdots \otimes _F F[H_k]$ and $H_i/Z(G)$ is the Sylow $p_i$-subgroup of $G/Z(G)$ for each i with $1\leq i\leq k$. Additionally, there is an element of order $p_i$ in F for each i with $1\leq i\leq k$.

We introduce and study the notion of a generalised Hecke orbit in a Shimura variety. We define a height function on such an orbit and study its properties. We obtain lower bounds for the sizes of Galois orbits of points in a generalised Hecke orbit in terms of this height function, assuming the ‘weakly adelic Mumford–Tate hypothesis’ and prove the generalised André–Pink–Zannier conjecture under this assumption, using Pila–Zannier strategy.

This paper focuses on the fundamental aspects of super-resolution, particularly addressing the stability of super-resolution and the estimation of two-point resolution. Our first major contribution is the introduction of two location-amplitude identities that characterize the relationships between locations and amplitudes of true and recovered sources in the one-dimensional super-resolution problem. These identities facilitate direct derivations of the super-resolution capabilities for recovering the number, location, and amplitude of sources, significantly advancing existing estimations to levels of practical relevance. As a natural extension, we establish the stability of a specific $l_{0}$ minimization algorithm in the super-resolution problem.

The second crucial contribution of this paper is the theoretical proof of a two-point resolution limit in multi-dimensional spaces. The resolution limit is expressed as

$$\begin{align*}\mathscr R = \frac{4\arcsin \left(\left(\frac{\sigma}{m_{\min}}\right)^{\frac{1}{2}} \right)}{\Omega} \end{align*}$$

${\frac {\sigma }{m_{\min }}}{\leqslant }{\frac {1}{2}}$

${\frac {\sigma }{m_{\min }}}$

${\mathrm {SNR}}$

$\Omega $

${\frac {\pi }{\Omega }}$

$2$

${\mathscr {R}}$

Motivated by the recent work of Zhi-Wei Sun [‘Problems and results on determinants involving Legendre symbols’, Preprint, arXiv:2405.03626], we study some matrices concerning subgroups of finite fields. For example, let $q\equiv 3\pmod 4$ be an odd prime power and let $\phi $ be the unique quadratic multiplicative character of the finite field $\mathbb {F}_q$. If the set $\{s_1,\ldots ,s_{(q-1)/2}\}=\{x^2:\ x\in \mathbb {F}_q\setminus \{0\}\}$, then we prove that

$$ \begin{align*}\det[t+\phi(s_i+s_j)+\phi(s_i-s_j)]_{1\le i,j\le (q-1)/2}=\bigg(\frac{q-1}{2}t-1\bigg)q^{{(q-3)}/{4}}.\end{align*} $$

This confirms a conjecture of Zhi-Wei Sun.

We present a new explicit formula for the determinant that contains superexponentially fewer terms than the usual Leibniz formula. As an immediate corollary of our formula, we show that the tensor rank of the $n \times n$ determinant tensor is no larger than the $n$-th Bell number, which is much smaller than the previously best-known upper bounds when $n \geq 4$. Over fields of non-zero characteristic we obtain even tighter upper bounds, and we also slightly improve the known lower bounds. In particular, we show that the $4 \times 4$ determinant over ${\mathbb{F}}_2$ has tensor rank exactly equal to $12$. Our results also improve upon the best-known upper bound for the Waring rank of the determinant when $n \geq 17$, and lead to a new family of axis-aligned polytopes that tile ${\mathbb{R}}^n$.

We determine the characteristic polynomials of the matrices $[q^{\,j-k}+t]_{1\le \,j,k\le n}$ and $[q^{\,j+k}+t]_{1\le \,j,k\le n}$ for any complex number $q\not =0,1$. As an application, for complex numbers $a,b,c$ with $b\not =0$ and $a^2\not =4b$, and the sequence $(w_m)_{m\in \mathbb Z}$ with $w_{m+1}=aw_m-bw_{m-1}$ for all $m\in \mathbb Z$, we determine the exact value of $\det [w_{\,j-k}+c\delta _{jk}]_{1\le \,j,k\le n}$.

We show that properties of pairs of finite, positive, and regular Borel measures on the complex unit circle such as domination, absolute continuity, and singularity can be completely described in terms of containment and intersection of their reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces of “Cauchy transforms” in the complex unit disk. This leads to a new construction of the classical Lebesgue decomposition and proof of the Radon–Nikodym theorem using reproducing kernel theory and functional analysis.

We solve the problem of finding the inverse connection formulae for the generalised Bessel polynomials and their reciprocals, the reverse generalised Bessel polynomials. The connection formulae express monomials in terms of the generalised Bessel polynomials. They enable formulae for the elements of change of basis matrices for both kinds of generalised Bessel polynomials to be derived and proved correct directly.

Motivated by the work initiated by Chapman [‘Determinants of Legendre symbol matrices’, Acta Arith. 115 (2004), 231–244], we investigate some arithmetical properties of generalised Legendre matrices over finite fields. For example, letting $a_1,\ldots ,a_{(q-1)/2}$ be all the nonzero squares in the finite field $\mathbb {F}_q$ containing q elements with $2\nmid q$, we give the explicit value of the determinant $D_{(q-1)/2}=\det [(a_i+a_j)^{(q-3)/2}]_{1\le i,j\le (q-1)/2}$. In particular, if $q=p$ is a prime greater than $3$, then

$$ \begin{align*}\bigg(\frac{\det D_{(p-1)/2}}{p}\bigg)= \begin{cases} 1 & \mbox{if}\ p\equiv1\pmod4,\\ (-1)^{(h(-p)+1)/2} & \mbox{if}\ p\equiv 3\pmod4\ \text{and}\ p>3, \end{cases}\end{align*} $$

where $(\frac {\cdot }{p})$ is the Legendre symbol and $h(-p)$ is the class number of $\mathbb {Q}(\sqrt {-p})$.

We introduce a generalization of immanants of matrices, using partition algebra characters in place of symmetric group characters. We prove that our immanant-like function on square matrices, which we refer to as the recombinant, agrees with the usual definition for immanants for the special case whereby the vacillating tableaux associated with the irreducible characters correspond, according to the Bratteli diagram for partition algebra representations, to the integer partition shapes for symmetric group characters. In contrast to previously studied variants and generalizations of immanants, as in Temperley–Lieb immanants and f-immanants, the sum that we use to define recombinants is indexed by a full set of partition diagrams, as opposed to permutations.

Brazil et al. [‘Maximal subgroups of infinite symmetric groups’, Proc. Lond. Math. Soc. (3) 68(1) (1994), 77–111] provided a new family of maximal subgroups of the symmetric group $G(X)$ defined on an infinite set X. It is easy to see that, in this case, $G(X)$ contains subsemigroups that are not groups, but nothing is known about nongroup maximal subsemigroups of $G(X)$. We provide infinitely many examples of such semigroups.

Let $m,n\ge 2$ be integers. Denote by $M_n$ the set of $n\times n$ complex matrices and $\|\cdot \|_{(p,k)}$ the $(p,k)$ norm on $M_{mn}$ with a positive integer $k\leq mn$ and a real number $p>2$. We show that a linear map $\phi :M_{mn}\rightarrow M_{mn}$ satisfies

$$ \begin{align*}\|\phi(A\otimes B)\|_{(p,k)}=\|A\otimes B\|_{(p,k)} \mathrm{\quad for~ all\quad}A\in M_m\ \mathrm{and}\ B\in M_n\end{align*} $$

if and only if there exist unitary matrices $U,V\in M_{mn}$ such that

$$ \begin{align*}\phi(A\otimes B)=U(\varphi_1(A)\otimes \varphi_2(B))V \mathrm{\quad for~ all\quad}A\in M_m\ \mathrm{and}\ B\in M_n,\end{align*} $$

where $\varphi _s$ is the identity map or the transposition map $X\mapsto X^T$ for $s=1,2$. The result is also extended to multipartite systems.

The Hoffman ratio bound, Lovász theta function, and Schrijver theta function are classical upper bounds for the independence number of graphs, which are useful in graph theory, extremal combinatorics, and information theory. By using generalized inverses and eigenvalues of graph matrices, we give bounds for independence sets and the independence number of graphs. Our bounds unify the Lovász theta function, Schrijver theta function, and Hoffman-type bounds, and we obtain the necessary and sufficient conditions of graphs attaining these bounds. Our work leads to some simple structural and spectral conditions for determining a maximum independent set, the independence number, the Shannon capacity, and the Lovász theta function of a graph.

To every finite metric space X, including all connected unweighted graphs with the minimum edge-distance metric, we attach an invariant that we call its blowup-polynomial $p_X(\{ n_x : x \in X \})$. This is obtained from the blowup $X[\mathbf {n}]$ – which contains $n_x$ copies of each point x – by computing the determinant of the distance matrix of $X[\mathbf {n}]$ and removing an exponential factor. We prove that as a function of the sizes $n_x$, $p_X(\mathbf {n})$ is a polynomial, is multi-affine, and is real-stable. This naturally associates a hitherto unstudied delta-matroid to each metric space X; we produce another novel delta-matroid for each tree, which interestingly does not generalize to all graphs. We next specialize to the case of $X = G$ a connected unweighted graph – so $p_G$ is “partially symmetric” in $\{ n_v : v \in V(G) \}$ – and show three further results: (a) We show that the polynomial $p_G$ is indeed a graph invariant, in that $p_G$ and its symmetries recover the graph G and its isometries, respectively. (b) We show that the univariate specialization $u_G(x) := p_G(x,\dots ,x)$ is a transform of the characteristic polynomial of the distance matrix $D_G$; this connects the blowup-polynomial of G to the well-studied “distance spectrum” of G. (c) We obtain a novel characterization of complete multipartite graphs, as precisely those for which the “homogenization at $-1$” of $p_G(\mathbf { n})$ is real-stable (equivalently, Lorentzian, or strongly/completely log-concave), if and only if the normalization of $p_G(-\mathbf { n})$ is strongly Rayleigh.

We improve and expand in two directions the theory of norms on complex matrices induced by random vectors. We first provide a simple proof of the classification of weakly unitarily invariant norms on the Hermitian matrices. We use this to extend the main theorem in Chávez, Garcia, and Hurley (2023, Canadian Mathematical Bulletin 66, 808–826) from exponent $d\geq 2$ to $d \geq 1$. Our proofs are much simpler than the originals: they do not require Lewis’ framework for group invariance in convex matrix analysis. This clarification puts the entire theory on simpler foundations while extending its range of applicability.

Given a set X of $n\times n$ matrices and a positive integer m, we consider the problem of estimating the cardinalities of the product sets $A_1 \cdots A_m$, where $A_i\in X$. When $X={\mathcal M}_n(\mathbb {Z};H)$, the set of $n\times n$ matrices with integer elements of size at most H, we give several bounds on the cardinalities of the product sets and solution sets of related equations such as $A_1 \cdots A_m=C$ and $A_1 \cdots A_m=B_1 \cdots B_m$. We also consider the case where X is the subset of matrices in ${\mathcal M}_n(\mathbb {F})$, where $\mathbb {F}$ is a field with bounded rank $k\leq n$. In this case, we completely classify the related product set.

In 1968, Steinberg [Endomorphisms of Linear Algebraic Groups, Memoirs of the American Mathematical Society, 80 (American Mathematical Society, Providence, RI, 1968)] proved a theorem stating that the exterior powers of an irreducible reflection representation of a Euclidean reflection group are again irreducible and pairwise nonisomorphic. We extend this result to a more general context where the inner product invariant under the group action may not necessarily exist.

Williamson’s theorem states that for any $2n \times 2n$ real positive definite matrix A, there exists a $2n \times 2n$ real symplectic matrix S such that $S^TAS=D \oplus D$, where D is an $n\times n$ diagonal matrix with positive diagonal entries known as the symplectic eigenvalues of A. Let H be any $2n \times 2n$ real symmetric matrix such that the perturbed matrix $A+H$ is also positive definite. In this paper, we show that any symplectic matrix $\tilde {S}$ diagonalizing $A+H$ in Williamson’s theorem is of the form $\tilde {S}=S Q+\mathcal {O}(\|H\|)$, where Q is a $2n \times 2n$ real symplectic as well as orthogonal matrix. Moreover, Q is in symplectic block diagonal form with the block sizes given by twice the multiplicities of the symplectic eigenvalues of A. Consequently, we show that $\tilde {S}$ and S can be chosen so that $\|\tilde {S}-S\|=\mathcal {O}(\|H\|)$. Our results hold even if A has repeated symplectic eigenvalues. This generalizes the stability result of symplectic matrices for non-repeated symplectic eigenvalues given by Idel, Gaona, and Wolf [Linear Algebra Appl., 525:45–58, 2017].

The celebrated Erdős–Ko–Rado (EKR) theorem for Paley graphs of square order states that all maximum cliques are canonical in the sense that each maximum clique arises from the subfield construction. Recently, Asgarli and Yip extended this result to Peisert graphs and other Cayley graphs which are Peisert-type graphs with nice algebraic properties on the connection set. On the other hand, there are Peisert-type graphs for which the EKR theorem fails to hold. In this article, we show that the EKR theorem of Paley graphs extends to almost all pseudo-Paley graphs of Peisert-type. Furthermore, we establish the stability results of the same flavor.