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.

This paper solves the rational noncommutative analogue of Hilbert’s 17th problem: if a noncommutative rational function is positive semidefinite on all tuples of Hermitian matrices in its domain, then it is a sum of Hermitian squares of noncommutative rational functions. This result is a generalisation and culmination of earlier positivity certificates for noncommutative polynomials or rational functions without Hermitian singularities. More generally, a rational Positivstellensatz for free spectrahedra is given: a noncommutative rational function is positive semidefinite or undefined at every matricial solution of a linear matrix inequality $L\succeq 0$ if and only if it belongs to the rational quadratic module generated by L. The essential intermediate step toward this Positivstellensatz for functions with singularities is an extension theorem for invertible evaluations of linear matrix pencils.

We prove an analogue of Alon’s spectral gap conjecture for random bipartite, biregular graphs. We use the Ihara–Bass formula to connect the non-backtracking spectrum to that of the adjacency matrix, employing the moment method to show there exists a spectral gap for the non-backtracking matrix. A by-product of our main theorem is that random rectangular zero-one matrices with fixed row and column sums are full rank with high probability. Finally, we illustrate applications to community detection, coding theory, and deterministic matrix completion.

We investigate a class of generalised stochastic complex matrices constructed from the class of all doubly stochastic matrices and a special class of circulant matrices. We determine the exact values of the structured singular values of all matrices in the class in terms of the constant row (column) sum.

We continue our investigation of the real space H of Hermitian matrices in $${M_n}(\mathbb{C})$$ with respect to norms on $${\mathbb{C}^n}$$. We complete the commutative case by showing that any proper real subspace of the real diagonal matrices on $${\mathbb{C}^n}$$ can appear as H. For the non-commutative case, we give a complete solution when n=3 and we provide various illustrative examples for n ≥ 4. We end with a short list of problems.

By making use of the Cauchy double alternant and the Laplace expansion formula, we establish two closed formulae for the determinants of factorial fractions that are then utilised to evaluate several determinants of binomial coefficients and Catalan numbers, including those obtained recently by Chammam [‘Generalized harmonic numbers, Jacobi numbers and a Hankel determinant evaluation’, Integral Transforms Spec. Funct. 30(7) (2019), 581–593].

We provide a description of the spectrum and compute the eigenvalues distribution of circulant Hankel matrices obtained as symmetrization of classical Toeplitz circulant matrices. Other types of circulant matrices such as simple and Cesàro circulant matrices are also considered.

In this note, we give a new property of de Branges–Rovnyak kernels. As the main theorem, it is shown that the exponential of de Branges–Rovnyak kernel is strictly positive definite if the corresponding Schur class function is nontrivial.

Let V be an infinite-dimensional vector space over a field F and let $I(V)$ be the inverse semigroup of all injective partial linear transformations on V. Given $\alpha \in I(V)$, we denote the domain and the range of $\alpha $ by ${\mathop {\textrm {dom}}}\,\alpha $ and ${\mathop {\textrm {im}}}\,\alpha $, and we call the cardinals $g(\alpha )={\mathop {\textrm {codim}}}\,{\mathop {\textrm {dom}}}\,\alpha $ and $d(\alpha )={\mathop {\textrm {codim}}}\,{\mathop {\textrm {im}}}\,\alpha $ the ‘gap’ and the ‘defect’ of $\alpha $. We study the semigroup $A(V)$ of all injective partial linear transformations with equal gap and defect and characterise Green’s relations and ideals in $A(V)$. This is analogous to work by Sanwong and Sullivan [‘Injective transformations with equal gap and defect’, Bull. Aust. Math. Soc. 79 (2009), 327–336] on a similarly defined semigroup for the set case, but we show that these semigroups are never isomorphic.

Necessary and sufficient conditions for the equality of the determinant and permanent for all powers of a given matrix are provided. The characterisation is based on a condition on merely one power.

Immanants are functions on square matrices generalizing the determinant and permanent. Kazhdan–Lusztig immanants, which are indexed by permutations, involve $q=1$ specializations of Type A Kazhdan–Lusztig polynomials, and were defined by Rhoades and Skandera (2006, Journal of Algebra 304, 793–811). Using results of Haiman (1993, Journal of the American Mathematical Society 6, 569–595) and Stembridge (1991, Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society 23, 422–428), Rhoades and Skandera showed that Kazhdan–Lusztig immanants are nonnegative on matrices whose minors are nonnegative. We investigate which Kazhdan–Lusztig immanants are positive on k-positive matrices (matrices whose minors of size $k \times k$ and smaller are positive). The Kazhdan–Lusztig immanant indexed by v is positive on k-positive matrices if v avoids 1324 and 2143 and for all noninversions $i< j$ of v, either $j-i \leq k$ or $v_j-v_i \leq k$. Our main tool is Lewis Carroll’s identity.

Let $G(n)={\textrm {Sp}}(n,1)$ or ${\textrm {SU}}(n,1)$. We classify conjugation orbits of generic pairs of loxodromic elements in $G(n)$. Such pairs, called ‘nonsingular’, were introduced by Gongopadhyay and Parsad for ${\textrm {SU}}(3,1)$. We extend this notion and classify $G(n)$-conjugation orbits of such elements in arbitrary dimension. For $n=3$, they give a subspace that can be parametrized using a set of coordinates whose local dimension equals the dimension of the underlying group. We further construct twist-bend parameters to glue such representations and obtain local parametrization for generic representations of the fundamental group of a closed (genus $g \geq 2$) oriented surface into $G(3)$.

The polarization constant of a Banach space X is defined as

\[{\text{c}}(X){\text{ }}{\text{ }}\mathop {\lim }\limits_{k \to \infty } {\text{ }}\sup {\text{c}}{(k,X)^{\frac{1}{k}}},\]

where \[{\text{c}}(k,X)\] stands for the best constant \[C > 0\] such that \[\mathop P\limits^ \vee \leqslant CP\] for every k-homogeneous polynomial \[P \in \mathcal{P}{(^k}X)\]. We show that if X is a finite dimensional complex space then \[{\text{c}}(X) = 1\]. We derive some consequences of this fact regarding the convergence of analytic functions on such spaces.

The result is no longer true in the real setting. Here we relate this constant with the so-called Bochnak’s complexification procedure.

We also study some other properties connected with polarization. Namely, we provide necessary conditions related to the geometry of X for \[c(2,X) = 1\] to hold. Additionally we link polarization constants with certain estimates of the nuclear norm of the product of polynomials.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: we present some matrix inequalities of log-majorization type for eigenvalues indexed by a sequence; we then apply our main theorem to generalize and improve the Hua–Marcus’ inequalities. Our results are stronger and more general than the existing ones.

Let p be a prime and let $J_r$ denote a full $r \times r$ Jordan block matrix with eigenvalue $1$ over a field F of characteristic p. For positive integers r and s with $r \leq s$, the Jordan canonical form of the $r s \times r s$ matrix $J_{r} \otimes J_{s}$ has the form $J_{\lambda _1} \oplus J_{\lambda _2} \oplus \cdots \oplus J_{\lambda _{r}}$. This decomposition determines a partition $\lambda (r,s,p)=(\lambda _1,\lambda _2,\ldots , \lambda _{r})$ of $r s$. Let $n_1, \ldots , n_k$ be the multiplicities of the distinct parts of the partition and set $c(r,s,p)=(n_1,\ldots ,n_k)$. Then $c(r,s,p)$ is a composition of r. We present a new bottom-up algorithm for computing $c(r,s,p)$ and $\lambda (r,s,p)$ directly from the base-p expansions for r and s.

A tight frame is the orthogonal projection of some orthonormal basis of $\mathbb {R}^n$ onto $\mathbb {R}^k.$ We show that a set of vectors is a tight frame if and only if the set of all cross products of these vectors is a tight frame. We reformulate a range of problems on the volume of projections (or sections) of regular polytopes in terms of tight frames and write a first-order necessary condition for local extrema of these problems. As applications, we prove new results for the problem of maximization of the volume of zonotopes.