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.

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.