The $q$-coloured Delannoy numbers $D_{n,k}(q)$ count the number of lattice paths from $(0,\,0)$ to $(n,\,k)$ using steps $(0,\,1)$, $(1,\,0)$ and $(1,\,1)$, among which the $(1,\,1)$ steps are coloured with $q$ colours. The focus of this paper is to study some analytical properties of the polynomial matrix $D(q)=[d_{n,k}(q)]_{n,k\geq 0}=[D_{n-k,k}(q)]_{n,k\geq 0}$, such as the strong $q$-log-concavity of polynomial sequences located in a ray or a transversal line of $D(q)$ and the $q$-total positivity of $D(q)$. We show that the zeros of all row sums $R_n(q)=\sum \nolimits _{k=0}^{n}d_{n,k}(q)$ are in $(-\infty,\, -1)$ and are dense in the corresponding semi-closed interval. We also prove that the zeros of all antidiagonal sums $A_n(q)=\sum \nolimits _{k=0}^{\lfloor n/2 \rfloor }d_{n-k,k}(q)$ are in the interval $(-\infty,\, -1]$ and are dense there.

A $D_{\infty }$-topological Markov chain is a topological Markov chain provided with an action of the infinite dihedral group $D_{\infty }$. It is defined by two zero-one square matrices A and J satisfying $AJ=JA^{\textsf {T}}$ and $J^2=I$. A flip signature is obtained from symmetric bilinear forms with respect to J on the eventual kernel of A. We modify Williams’ decomposition theorem to prove the flip signature is a $D_{\infty }$-conjugacy invariant. We introduce natural $D_{\infty }$-actions on Ashley’s eight-by-eight and the full two-shift. The flip signatures show that Ashley’s eight-by-eight and the full two-shift equipped with the natural $D_{\infty }$-actions are not $D_{\infty }$-conjugate. We also discuss the notion of $D_{\infty }$-shift equivalence and the Lind zeta function.

We consider an analogue of Kontsevich’s matrix Airy function where the cubic potential $\textrm{Tr}(\Phi^3)$ is replaced by a quartic term $\textrm{Tr}\!\left(\Phi^4\right)$ . Cumulants of the resulting measure are known to decompose into cycle types for which a recursive system of equations can be established. We develop a new, purely algebraic geometrical solution strategy for the two initial equations of the recursion, based on properties of Cauchy matrices. These structures led in subsequent work to the discovery that the quartic analogue of the Kontsevich model obeys blobbed topological recursion.

In this paper, we study the images of multilinear graded polynomials on the graded algebra of upper triangular matrices $UT_n$. For positive integers $q\leq n$, we classify these images on $UT_{n}$ endowed with a particular elementary ${\mathbb {Z}}_{q}$-grading. As a consequence, we obtain the images of multilinear graded polynomials on $UT_{n}$ with the natural ${\mathbb {Z}}_{n}$-grading. We apply this classification in order to give a new condition for a multilinear polynomial in terms of graded identities so that to obtain the traceless matrices in its image on the full matrix algebra. We also describe the images of multilinear polynomials on the graded algebras $UT_{2}$ and $UT_{3}$, for arbitrary gradings. We finish the paper by proving a similar result for the graded Jordan algebra $UJ_{2}$, and also for $UJ_{3}$ endowed with the natural elementary ${\mathbb {Z}}_{3}$-grading.

We calculate the moments of the characteristic polynomials of $N\times N$ matrices drawn from the Hermitian ensembles of Random Matrix Theory, at a position t in the bulk of the spectrum, as a series expansion in powers of t. We focus in particular on the Gaussian Unitary Ensemble. We employ a novel approach to calculate the coefficients in this series expansion of the moments, appropriately scaled. These coefficients are polynomials in N. They therefore grow as $N\to\infty$ , meaning that in this limit the radius of convergence of the series expansion tends to zero. This is related to oscillations as t varies that are increasingly rapid as N grows. We show that the $N\to\infty$ asymptotics of the moments can be derived from this expansion when $t=0$ . When $t\ne 0$ we observe a surprising cancellation when the expansion coefficients for N and $N+1$ are formally averaged: this procedure removes all of the N-dependent terms leading to values that coincide with those expected on the basis of previously established asymptotic formulae for the moments. We obtain as well formulae for the expectation values of products of the secular coefficients.

We use a linear algebra interpretation of the action of Hecke operators on Drinfeld cusp forms to prove that when the dimension of the $\mathbb {C}_\infty $ -vector space $S_{k,m}(\mathrm {{GL}}_2(\mathbb {F}_q[t]))$ is one, the Hecke operator $\mathbf {T}_t$ is injective on $S_{k,m}(\mathrm {{GL}}_2(\mathbb {F}_q[t]))$ and $S_{k,m}(\Gamma _0(t))$ is a direct sum of oldforms and newforms.

Let $a,b$ and n be positive integers and let $S=\{x_1, \ldots , x_n\}$ be a set of n distinct positive integers. For ${x\in S}$ , define $G_{S}(x)=\{d\in S: d<x, \,d\mid x \ \mathrm {and} \ (d\mid y\mid x, y\in S)\Rightarrow y\in \{d,x\}\}$ . Denote by $[S^a]$ the $n\times n$ matrix having the ath power of the least common multiple of $x_i$ and $x_j$ as its $(i,j)$ -entry. We show that the bth power matrix $[S^b]$ is divisible by the ath power matrix $[S^a]$ if $a\mid b$ and S is gcd closed (that is, $\gcd (x_i, x_j)\in S$ for all integers i and j with $1\le i, j\le n$ ) and $\max _{x\in S} \{|G_S (x)|\}=1$ . This confirms a conjecture of Shaofang Hong [‘Divisibility properties of power GCD matrices and power LCM matrices’, Linear Algebra Appl. 428 (2008), 1001–1008].

Conditional on the extended Riemann hypothesis, we show that with high probability, the characteristic polynomial of a random symmetric $\{\pm 1\}$ -matrix is irreducible. This addresses a question raised by Eberhard in recent work. The main innovation in our work is establishing sharp estimates regarding the rank distribution of symmetric random $\{\pm 1\}$ -matrices over $\mathbb{F}_p$ for primes $2 < p \leq \exp(O(n^{1/4}))$ . Previously, such estimates were available only for $p = o(n^{1/8})$ . At the heart of our proof is a way to combine multiple inverse Littlewood–Offord-type results to control the contribution to singularity-type events of vectors in $\mathbb{F}_p^{n}$ with anticoncentration at least $1/p + \Omega(1/p^2)$ . Previously, inverse Littlewood–Offord-type results only allowed control over vectors with anticoncentration at least $C/p$ for some large constant $C > 1$ .

Consider two-type linear-fractional branching processes in varying environments with asymptotically constant mean matrices. Let $\nu$ be the extinction time. Under certain conditions, we show that both $\mathbb{P}(\nu=n)$ and $\mathbb{P}(\nu>n)$ are asymptotically the same as some functions of the products of spectral radii of the mean matrices. We also give an example for which $\mathbb{P}(\nu=n)$ decays with various speeds such as ${c}/({n^{1/2}\log n)^2}$ , ${c}/{n^\beta}$ , $\beta >1$ , which are very different from those of homogeneous multitype Galton–Watson processes.

For a not-necessarily commutative ring $R$ we define an abelian group $W(R;M)$ of Witt vectors with coefficients in an $R$-bimodule $M$. These groups generalize the usual big Witt vectors of commutative rings and we prove that they have analogous formal properties and structure. One main result is that $W(R) := W(R;R)$ is Morita invariant in $R$. For an $R$-linear endomorphism $f$ of a finitely generated projective $R$-module we define a characteristic element $\chi _f \in W(R)$. This element is a non-commutative analogue of the classical characteristic polynomial and we show that it has similar properties. The assignment $f \mapsto \chi _f$ induces an isomorphism between a suitable completion of cyclic $K$-theory $K_0^{\mathrm {cyc}}(R)$ and $W(R)$.

Every transitive family of subspaces of a vector space of finite dimension $n\ge 2$ over a field $\mathbb {F}$ contains a subfamily which is transitive but has no proper transitive subfamily. Such a subfamily is called minimally transitive. Each has at most $n^2-n+1$ elements. On ${{\mathbb {C}}}^n, n\ge 3$ , a minimally transitive family of subspaces has at least four elements and a minimally transitive family of one-dimensional subspaces has $\tau $ elements where $n+1\le \tau \le 2n-2$ . We show how a minimally transitive family of one-dimensional subspaces arises when it consists of the subspaces spanned by the standard basis vectors together with those spanned by $0$ – $1$ vectors. On a space of dimension four, the set of nontrivial elements of a medial subspace lattice has five elements if it is minimally transitive. On spaces of dimension $12$ or more, the set of nontrivial elements of a medial subspace lattice can have six or more elements and be minimally transitive.

We study the classical Hermite–Hadamard inequality in the matrix setting. This leads to a number of interesting matrix inequalities such as the Schatten p-norm estimates

$$ \begin{align*}\left(\|A^q\|_p^p + \|B^q\|_p^p\right)^{1/p} \le \|(xA+(1-x)B)^q\|_p+ \|((1-x)A+xB)^q\|_p, \end{align*} $$

$n\times n$

$A,B$

$0<q,x<1$

$X^*X+Y^*Y=XX^*+YY^*=I$

$$ \begin{align*}(X^*AX+Y^*BY)\oplus (Y^*AY+X^*BX) =\frac{1}{2n}\sum_{k=1}^{2n} U_k (A\oplus B)U_k^*, \end{align*} $$

$2n\times 2n$

$U_k$

Let $F$ be an infinite field of positive characteristic $p > 2$ and let $G$ be a group. In this paper, we study the graded identities satisfied by an associative algebra equipped with an elementary $G$-grading. Let $E$ be the infinite-dimensional Grassmann algebra. For every $a$, $b\in \mathbb {N}$, we provide a basis for the graded polynomial identities, up to graded monomial identities, for the verbally prime algebras $M_{a,b}(E)$, as well as their tensor products, with their elementary gradings. Moreover, we give an alternative proof of the fact that the tensor product $M_{a,b}(E)\otimes M_{r,s}(E)$ and $M_{ar+bs,as+br}(E)$ are $F$-algebras which are not PI equivalent. Actually, we prove that the $T_{G}$-ideal of the former algebra is contained in the $T$-ideal of the latter. Furthermore, the inclusion is proper. Recall that it is well known that these algebras satisfy the same multilinear identities and hence in characteristic 0 they are PI equivalent.

Motivated by considerations of the quadratic orthogonal bisectional curvature, we address the question of when a weighted graph (with possibly negative weights) has nonnegative Dirichlet energy.

Let $\mathbf{X}$ be a $p\times n$ random matrix whose entries are independent and identically distributed real random variables with zero mean and unit variance. We study the limiting behaviors of the 2-normal condition number k(p,n) of $\mathbf{X}$ in terms of large deviations for large n, with p being fixed or $p=p(n)\rightarrow\infty$ with $p(n)=o(n)$ . We propose two main ingredients: (i) to relate the large-deviation probabilities of k(p,n) to those involving n independent and identically distributed random variables, which enables us to consider a quite general distribution of the entries (namely the sub-Gaussian distribution), and (ii) to control, for standard normal entries, the upper tail of k(p,n) using the upper tails of ratios of two independent $\chi^2$ random variables, which enables us to establish an application in statistical inference.

We show that the elements of the dual of the Euclidean distance matrix cone can be described via an inequality on a certain weighted sum of its eigenvalues.

This short note refines a noncommutative (nc) Oka–Weil theorem by using a characterization of free compact nc sets based on the notion of dilation hulls. A consequence of it is that any free holomorphic function can be represented as a free polynomial on each free compact nc set.

Let A be a semisimple, unital, and complex Banach algebra. It is well known and easy to prove that A is commutative if and only $e^xe^y=e^{x+y}$ for all $x,y\in A$ . Elaborating on the spectral theory of commutativity developed by Aupetit, Zemánek, and Zemánek and Pták, we derive, in this paper, commutativity results via a spectral comparison of $e^xe^y$ and $e^{x+y}$ .

In set theory without the Axiom of Choice ( $\mathsf {AC}$ ), we investigate the open problem of the deductive strength of statements which concern the existence of almost disjoint and maximal almost disjoint (MAD) families of infinite-dimensional subspaces of a given infinite-dimensional vector space, as well as the extension of almost disjoint families in infinite-dimensional vector spaces to MAD families.

A celebrated theorem of Douglas Lind states that a positive real number is equal to the spectral radius of some integral primitive matrix, if and only if, it is a Perron algebraic integer. Given a Perron number p, we prove that there is an integral irreducible matrix with spectral radius p, and with dimension bounded above in terms of the algebraic degree, the ratio of the first two largest Galois conjugates, and arithmetic information about the ring of integers of its number field. This arithmetic information can be taken to be either the discriminant or the minimal Hermite-like thickness. Equivalently, given a Perron number p, there is an irreducible shift of finite type with entropy $\log (p)$ defined as an edge shift on a graph whose number of vertices is bounded above in terms of the aforementioned data.