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.

The existence of isometric embedding of $S_q^m$ into $S_p^n$, where $1\leq p\neq q\leq \infty$ and $m,n\geq 2$, has been recently studied in [6]. In this article, we extend the study of isometric embeddability beyond the above-mentioned range of $p$ and $q$. More precisely, we show that there is no isometric embedding of the commutative quasi-Banach space $\ell _q^m(\mathbb {R})$ into $\ell _p^n(\mathbb {R})$, where $(q,p)\in (0,\infty )\times (0,1)$ and $p\neq q$. As non-commutative quasi-Banach spaces, we show that there is no isometric embedding of $S_q^m$ into $S_p^n$, where $(q,p)\in (0,2)\setminus \{1\}\times (0,1)$ $\cup \, \{1\}\times (0,1)\setminus \left \{\!\frac {1}{n}:n\in \mathbb {N}\right \}$ $\cup \, \{\infty \}\times (0,1)\setminus \left \{\!\frac {1}{n}:n\in \mathbb {N}\right \}$ and $p\neq q$. Moreover, in some restrictive cases, we also show that there is no isometric embedding of $S_q^m$ into $S_p^n$, where $(q,p)\in [2, \infty )\times (0,1)$. A new tool in our paper is the non-commutative Clarkson's inequality for Schatten class operators. Other tools involved are the Kato–Rellich theorem and multiple operator integrals in perturbation theory, followed by intricate computations involving power-series analysis.

As an extension of Sylvester’s matrix, a tridiagonal matrix is investigated by determining both left and right eigenvectors. Orthogonality relations between left and right eigenvectors are derived. Two determinants of the matrices constructed by the left and right eigenvectors are evaluated in closed form.

In 2005, N. Nikolski proved among other things that for any $r\in (0,1)$ and any $K\geq 1$, the condition number $CN(T)=\Vert T\Vert \cdot \Vert T^{-1}\Vert $ of any invertible n-dimensional complex Banach space operators T satisfying the Kreiss condition, with spectrum contained in $\left \{ r\leq |z|<1\right \}$, satisfies the inequality $CN(T)\leq CK(T)\Vert T \Vert n/r^{n}$ where $K(T)$ denotes the Kreiss constant of T and $C>0$ is an absolute constant. He also proved that for $r\ll 1/n,$ the latter bound is asymptotically sharp as $n\rightarrow \infty $. In this note, we prove that this bound is actually achieved by a family of explicit $n\times n$ Toeplitz matrices with arbitrary singleton spectrum $\{\lambda \}\subset \mathbb {D}\setminus \{0\}$ and uniformly bounded Kreiss constant. Independently, we exhibit a sequence of Jordan blocks with Kreiss constants tending to $\infty $ showing that Nikolski’s inequality is still asymptotically sharp as K and n go to $\infty $.

Let $M_{\langle \mathbf {u},\mathbf {v},\mathbf {w}\rangle }\in \mathbb C^{\mathbf {u}\mathbf {v}}{\mathord { \otimes } } \mathbb C^{\mathbf {v}\mathbf {w}}{\mathord { \otimes } } \mathbb C^{\mathbf {w}\mathbf {u}}$ denote the matrix multiplication tensor (and write $M_{\langle \mathbf {n} \rangle }=M_{\langle \mathbf {n},\mathbf {n},\mathbf {n}\rangle }$ ), and let $\operatorname {det}_3\in (\mathbb C^9)^{{\mathord { \otimes } } 3}$ denote the determinant polynomial considered as a tensor. For a tensor T, let $\underline {\mathbf {R}}(T)$ denote its border rank. We (i) give the first hand-checkable algebraic proof that $\underline {\mathbf {R}}(M_{\langle 2\rangle })=7$ , (ii) prove $\underline {\mathbf {R}}(M_{\langle 223\rangle })=10$ and $\underline {\mathbf {R}}(M_{\langle 233\rangle })=14$ , where previously the only nontrivial matrix multiplication tensor whose border rank had been determined was $M_{\langle 2\rangle }$ , (iii) prove $\underline {\mathbf {R}}( M_{\langle 3\rangle })\geq 17$ , (iv) prove $\underline {\mathbf {R}}(\operatorname {det}_3)=17$ , improving the previous lower bound of $12$ , (v) prove $\underline {\mathbf {R}}(M_{\langle 2\mathbf {n}\mathbf {n}\rangle })\geq \mathbf {n}^2+1.32\mathbf {n}$ for all $\mathbf {n}\geq 25$ , where previously only $\underline {\mathbf {R}}(M_{\langle 2\mathbf {n}\mathbf {n}\rangle })\geq \mathbf {n}^2+1$ was known, as well as lower bounds for $4\leq \mathbf {n}\leq 25$ , and (vi) prove $\underline {\mathbf {R}}(M_{\langle 3\mathbf {n}\mathbf {n}\rangle })\geq \mathbf {n}^2+1.6\mathbf {n}$ for all $\mathbf {n} \ge 18$ , where previously only $\underline {\mathbf {R}}(M_{\langle 3\mathbf {n}\mathbf {n}\rangle })\geq \mathbf {n}^2+2$ was known. The last two results are significant for two reasons: (i) they are essentially the first nontrivial lower bounds for tensors in an “unbalanced” ambient space and (ii) they demonstrate that the methods we use (border apolarity) may be applied to sequences of tensors.

The methods used to obtain the results are new and “nonnatural” in the sense of Razborov and Rudich, in that the results are obtained via an algorithm that cannot be effectively applied to generic tensors. We utilize a new technique, called border apolarity developed by Buczyńska and Buczyński in the general context of toric varieties. We apply this technique to develop an algorithm that, given a tensor T and an integer r, in a finite number of steps, either outputs that there is no border rank r decomposition for T or produces a list of all normalized ideals which could potentially result from a border rank decomposition. The algorithm is effectively implementable when T has a large symmetry group, in which case it outputs potential decompositions in a natural normal form. The algorithm is based on algebraic geometry and representation theory.

Large deviations of the largest and smallest eigenvalues of $\mathbf{X}\mathbf{X}^\top/n$ are studied in this note, where $\mathbf{X}_{p\times n}$ is a $p\times n$ random matrix with independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) sub-Gaussian entries. The assumption imposed on the dimension size p and the sample size n is $p=p(n)\rightarrow\infty$ with $p(n)={\mathrm{o}}(n)$. This study generalizes one result obtained in [3].

Kruskal’s theorem states that a sum of product tensors constitutes a unique tensor rank decomposition if the so-called k-ranks of the product tensors are large. We prove a ‘splitting theorem’ for sets of product tensors, in which the k-rank condition of Kruskal’s theorem is weakened to the standard notion of rank, and the conclusion of uniqueness is relaxed to the statement that the set of product tensors splits (i.e., is disconnected as a matroid). Our splitting theorem implies a generalization of Kruskal’s theorem. While several extensions of Kruskal’s theorem are already present in the literature, all of these use Kruskal’s original permutation lemma and hence still cannot certify uniqueness when the k-ranks are below a certain threshold. Our generalization uses a completely new proof technique, contains many of these extensions and can certify uniqueness below this threshold. We obtain several other useful results on tensor decompositions as consequences of our splitting theorem. We prove sharp lower bounds on tensor rank and Waring rank, which extend Sylvester’s matrix rank inequality to tensors. We also prove novel uniqueness results for nonrank tensor decompositions.

We develop a method based on the Burau matrix to detect conditions on the linking numbers of braid strands. Our main application is to iterated exchanged braids. Unless the braid permutation fixes both braid edge strands, we establish under some fairly generic conditions on the linking numbers a ‘subsymmetry’ property; in particular at most two such braids can be mutually conjugate. As an addition, we prove that the Burau kernel is contained in the commutator subgroup of the pure braid group. We discuss also some properties of the Burau image.

We first establish a lower bound on the size and spectral radius of a graph G to guarantee that G contains a fractional perfect matching. Then, we determine an upper bound on the distance spectral radius of a graph G to ensure that G has a fractional perfect matching. Furthermore, we construct some extremal graphs to show all the bounds are best possible.

We introduce a family of norms on the $n \times n$ complex matrices. These norms arise from a probabilistic framework, and their construction and validation involve probability theory, partition combinatorics, and trace polynomials in noncommuting variables. As a consequence, we obtain a generalization of Hunter’s positivity theorem for the complete homogeneous symmetric polynomials.