If A is a real $2n \times 2n$ positive definite matrix, then there exists a symplectic matrix M such that $M^TAM=\text {diag}(D, D),$ where D is a positive diagonal matrix with diagonal entries $d_1(A)\leqslant \cdots \leqslant d_n(A).$ We prove a maxmin principle for $d_k(A)$ akin to the classical Courant–Fisher–Weyl principle for Hermitian eigenvalues and use it to derive an analogue of the Weyl inequality $d_{i+j-1}(A+B)\geqslant d_i(A)+d_j(B).$

We obtain several norm and eigenvalue inequalities for positive matrices partitioned into four blocks. The results involve the numerical range $W(X)$ of the off-diagonal block $X$, especially the distance $d$ from $0$ to $W(X)$. A special consequence is an estimate,

$$\begin{eqnarray}\text{diam}\,W\left(\left[\begin{array}{@{}cc@{}}A & X\\ X^{\ast } & B\end{array}\right]\right)-\text{diam}\,W\biggl(\frac{A+B}{2}\biggr)\geq 2d,\end{eqnarray}$$

We investigate the real space H of Hermitian matrices in $M_n(\mathbb{C})$ with respect to norms on $\mathbb{C}^n$. For absolute norms, the general form of Hermitian matrices was essentially established by Schneider and Turner [Schneider and Turner, Linear and Multilinear Algebra (1973), 9–31]. Here, we offer a much shorter proof. For non-absolute norms, we begin an investigation of H by means of a series of examples, with particular reference to dimension and commutativity.

Building on MacDonald’s formula for the distance from a rank-one projection to the set of nilpotents in $\mathbb {M}_n(\mathbb {C})$, we prove that the distance from a rank $n-1$ projection to the set of nilpotents in $\mathbb {M}_n(\mathbb {C})$ is $\frac {1}{2}\sec (\frac {\pi }{\frac {n}{n-1}+2} )$. For each $n\geq 2$, we construct examples of pairs $(Q,T)$ where Q is a projection of rank $n-1$ and $T\in \mathbb {M}_n(\mathbb {C})$ is a nilpotent of minimal distance to Q. Furthermore, we prove that any two such pairs are unitarily equivalent. We end by discussing possible extensions of these results in the case of projections of intermediate ranks.

We show that an irreducible family ${\mathcal{S}}$ of complex $n\times n$ matrices satisfies Paz’s conjecture if it contains a rank-one matrix. We next investigate properties of families of rank-one matrices. If ${\mathcal{R}}$ is a linearly independent, irreducible family of rank-one matrices then (i) ${\mathcal{R}}$ has length at most $n$, (ii) if all pairwise products are nonzero, ${\mathcal{R}}$ has length 1 or 2, (iii) if ${\mathcal{R}}$ consists of elementary matrices, its minimum spanning length $M$ is the smallest integer $M$ such that every elementary matrix belongs to the set of words in ${\mathcal{R}}$ of length at most $M$. Finally, for any integer $k$ dividing $n-1$, there is an irreducible family of elementary matrices with length $k+1$.

We establish inequalities of Jensen’s and Slater’s type in the general setting of a Hermitian unital Banach $\ast$-algebra, analytic convex functions and positive normalised linear functionals.

The first fundamental theorem of invariant theory for the orthosymplectic supergroup scheme $\text{OSp}(m|2n)$ states that there is a full functor from the Brauer category with parameter $m-2n$ to the category of tensor representations of $\text{OSp}(m|2n)$. This has recently been proved using algebraic supergeometry to relate the problem to the invariant theory of the general linear supergroup. In this work, we use the same circle of ideas to prove the second fundamental theorem for the orthosymplectic supergroup. Specifically, we give a linear description of the kernel of the surjective homomorphism from the Brauer algebra to endomorphisms of tensor space, which commute with the orthosymplectic supergroup. The main result has a clear and succinct formulation in terms of Brauer diagrams. Our proof includes, as special cases, new proofs of the corresponding second fundamental theorems for the classical orthogonal and symplectic groups, as well as their quantum analogues, which are independent of the Capelli identities. The results of this paper have led to the result that the map from the Brauer algebra ${\mathcal{B}}_{r}(m-2n)$ to endomorphisms of $V^{\otimes r}$ is an isomorphism if and only if $r<(m+1)(n+1)$.

We prove that every automorphism of an infinite-dimensional vector space over a field is the product of four involutions, a result that is optimal in the general case. We also characterize the automorphisms that are the product of three involutions. More generally, we study decompositions of automorphisms into three or four factors with prescribed split annihilating polynomials of degree $2$.

We define extensions of the weighted core–EP inverse and weighted core–EP pre-orders of bounded linear operators on Hilbert spaces to elements of a $C^{\ast }$-algebra. Some properties of the weighted core–EP inverse and weighted core–EP pre-orders are generalized and some new ones are proved. Using the weighted element, the weighted core–EP pre-order, the minus partial order and the star partial order of certain elements, new weighted pre-orders are presented on the set of all $wg$-Drazin invertible elements of a $C^{\ast }$-algebra. Applying these results, we introduce and characterize new partial orders which extend the core–EP pre-order to a partial order.

We present conditions for a set of matrices satisfying a permutation identity to be simultaneously triangularizable. As applications of our results, we generalize Radjavi’s result on triangularization of matrices with permutable trace and results by Yan and Tang on linear triangularization of polynomial maps.

We explore the constraints imposed by Poincaré duality on the resonance varieties of a graded algebra. For a three-dimensional Poincaré duality algebra A, we obtain a fairly precise geometric description of the resonance varieties ${\cal R}^i_k(A)$.

We present a sufficient and necessary condition for a function module space $X$ to have the approximate hyperplane series property (AHSP). As a consequence, we have that the space ${\mathcal{C}}_{0}(L,E)$ of bounded and continuous $E$-valued mappings defined on the locally compact Hausdorff space $L$ has AHSP if and only if $E$ has AHSP.

Let $F$ be an algebraically closed field of characteristic $0$ and let $\operatorname{sp}(2l,F)$ be the rank $l$ symplectic algebra of all $2l\times 2l$ matrices $x=\big(\!\begin{smallmatrix}A & B\\ C & -A^{t}\end{smallmatrix}\!\big)$ over $F$, where $A^{t}$ is the transpose of $A$ and $B,C$ are symmetric matrices of order $l$. The commuting graph $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}(\operatorname{sp}(2l,F))$ of $\operatorname{sp}(2l,F)$ is a graph whose vertex set consists of all nonzero elements in $\operatorname{sp}(2l,F)$ and two distinct vertices $x$ and $y$ are adjacent if and only if $xy=yx$. We prove that the diameter of $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}(\operatorname{sp}(2l,F))$ is $4$ when $l>2$.

Let $S$ be a surface, $G$ a simply connected classical group, and $G^{\prime }$ the associated adjoint form of the group. We show that the moduli spaces of framed local systems ${\mathcal{X}}_{G^{\prime },S}$ and ${\mathcal{A}}_{G,S}$, which were constructed by Fock and Goncharov [‘Moduli spaces of local systems and higher Teichmuller theory’, Publ. Math. Inst. Hautes Études Sci.103 (2006), 1–212], have the structure of cluster varieties, and thus together form a cluster ensemble. This simplifies some of the proofs in that paper, and also allows one to quantize higher Teichmuller space, which was previously only possible when $G$ was of type $A$.

Let $K$ be a field that admits a cyclic Galois extension of degree $n\geq 2$. The symmetric group $S_{n}$ acts on $K^{n}$ by permutation of coordinates. Given a subgroup $G$ of $S_{n}$ and $u\in K^{n}$, let $V_{G}(u)$ be the $K$-vector space spanned by the orbit of $u$ under the action of $G$. In this paper we show that, for a special family of groups $G$ of affine type, the dimension of $V_{G}(u)$ can be computed via the greatest common divisor of certain polynomials in $K[x]$. We present some applications of our results to the cases $K=\mathbb{Q}$ and $K$ finite.

We prove that if $\mathfrak{s}$ is a solvable Lie algebra of matrices over a field of characteristic 0 and $A\in \mathfrak{s}$, then the semisimple and nilpotent summands of the Jordan–Chevalley decomposition of $A$ belong to $\mathfrak{s}$ if and only if there exist $S,N\in \mathfrak{s}$, $S$ is semisimple, $N$ is nilpotent (not necessarily $[S,N]=0$) such that $A=S+N$.

We introduce the concept of a $\{\unicode[STIX]{x1D70E},\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}\}$-Rota–Baxter operator, as a twisted version of a Rota–Baxter operator of weight zero. We show how to obtain a certain $\{\unicode[STIX]{x1D70E},\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}\}$-Rota–Baxter operator from a solution of the associative (Bi)Hom-Yang–Baxter equation, and, in a compatible way, a Hom-pre-Lie algebra from an infinitesimal Hom-bialgebra.

Three families of examples are given of sets of $(0,1)$ -matrices whose pairwise products form a basis for theunderlying full matrix algebra. In the first two families, the elements haverank at most two and some of the products can have multiple entries. In thethird example, the matrices have equal rank $\!\sqrt{n}$ and all of the pairwise products are single-entried $(0,1)$ -matrices.

Let $G$ be an infinite graph on countably many vertices and let $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6EC}$ be a closed, infinite set of real numbers. We establishthe existence of an unbounded self-adjoint operator whose graph is $G$ and whose spectrum is $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6EC}$ .

In this paper, we study the relative perturbation bounds for jointeigenvalues of commuting tuples of normal $n\times n$ matrices. Some Hoffman–Wielandt-type relative perturbationbounds are proved using the Clifford algebra technique. We also extend aresult for diagonalisable matrices which improves a relative perturbationbound for single matrices.