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.

Inequalities on partial traces of positive semidefinite matrices are studied. Extensions of several existing inequalities on the determinant of partial traces are then obtained. Particularly, we improve a determinantal inequality given by Lin [Canad. Math. Bull. 59(2016)].

Associated with every $2n\times 2n$ real positive definite matrix $A,$ there exist n positive numbers called the symplectic eigenvalues of $A,$ and a basis of $\mathbb {R}^{2n}$ called the symplectic eigenbasis of A corresponding to these numbers. In this paper, we discuss differentiability and analyticity of the symplectic eigenvalues and corresponding symplectic eigenbasis and compute their derivatives. We then derive an analogue of Lidskii’s theorem for symplectic eigenvalues as an application.

We introduce the $\textbf{h}$-minimum spanning length of a family ${\mathcal A}$ of $n\times n$ matrices over a field $\mathbb F$, where $\textbf{h}$ is a p-tuple of positive integers, each no more than n. For an algebraically closed field $\mathbb F$, Burnside’s theorem on irreducibility is essentially that the $(n,n,\ldots ,n)$-minimum spanning length of ${\mathcal A}$ exists if ${\mathcal A}$ is irreducible. We show that the $\textbf{h}$-minimum spanning length of ${\mathcal A}$ exists for every $\textbf{h}=(h_1,h_2,\ldots , h_p)$ if ${\mathcal A}$ is an irreducible family of invertible matrices with at least three elements. The $(1,1, \ldots ,1)$-minimum spanning length is at most $4n\log _{2} 2n+8n-3$. Several examples are given, including one giving a complete calculation of the $(p,q)$-minimum spanning length of the ordered pair $(J^*,J)$, where J is the Jordan matrix.

For an infinite Toeplitz matrix T with nonnegative real entries we find the conditions under which the equation $\boldsymbol {x}=T\boldsymbol {x}$, where $\boldsymbol {x}$ is an infinite vector column, has a nontrivial bounded positive solution. The problem studied in this paper is associated with the asymptotic behaviour of convolution-type recurrence relations and can be applied to problems arising in the theory of stochastic processes and other areas.

We provide a generalised Laplace expansion for the permanent function and, as a consequence, we re-prove a multinomial Vandermonde convolution. Some combinatorial identities are derived by applying special matrices to the expansion.

We study the $L^{q}$-spectrum of measures in the plane generated by certain nonlinear maps. In particular, we consider attractors of iterated function systems consisting of maps whose components are $C^{1+\alpha }$ and for which the Jacobian is a lower triangular matrix at every point subject to a natural domination condition on the entries. We calculate the $L^{q}$-spectrum of Bernoulli measures supported on such sets by using an appropriately defined analogue of the singular value function and an appropriate pressure function.

We introduce the notion of the slot length of a family of matrices over an arbitrary field ${\mathbb {F}}$. Using this definition it is shown that, if $n\ge 5$ and A and B are $n\times n$ complex matrices with A unicellular and the pair $\{A,B\}$ irreducible, the slot length s of $\{A,B\}$ satisfies $2\le s\le n-1$, where both inequalities are sharp, for every n. It is conjectured that the slot length of any irreducible pair of $n\times n$ matrices, where $n\ge 5$, is at most $n-1$. The slot length of a family of rank-one complex matrices can be equal to n.

This work focuses on the ongoing research of lineability (the search for large linear structures within certain non-linear sets) in non-Archimedean frameworks. Among several other results, we show that there exist large linear structures inside each of the following sets: (i) functions with a fixed closed subset of continuity, (ii) all continuous functions that are not Darboux continuous (or vice versa), (iii) all functions whose Dieudonné integral does not behave as an antiderivative, and (iv) functions with finite range and having antiderivative.

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 investigate the concept of orbital free entropy from the viewpoint of the matrix liberation process. We will show that many basic questions around the definition of orbital free entropy are reduced to the question of full large deviation principle for the matrix liberation process. We will also obtain a large deviation upper bound for a certain family of random matrices that is essential to define the orbital free entropy. The resulting rate function is made up into a new approach to free mutual information.

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 $k+1$.

Using an idea of Doug Lind, we give a lower bound for the Perron–Frobenius degree of a Perron number that is not totally real, in terms of the layout of its Galois conjugates in the complex plane. As an application, we prove that there are cubic Perron numbers whose Perron–Frobenius degrees are arbitrary large, a result known to Lind, McMullen and Thurston. A similar result is proved for bi-Perron numbers.

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.

A basic problem in the theory of partially ordered vector spaces is to characterise those cones on which every order-isomorphism is linear. We show that this is the case for every Archimedean cone that equals the inf-sup hull of the sum of its engaged extreme rays. This condition is milder than existing ones and is satisfied by, for example, the cone of positive operators in the space of bounded self-adjoint operators on a Hilbert space. We also give a general form of order-isomorphisms on the inf-sup hull of the sum of all extreme rays of the cone, which extends results of Artstein–Avidan and Slomka to infinite-dimensional partially ordered vector spaces, and prove the linearity of homogeneous order-isomorphisms in a variety of new settings.

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 $2$.