K-Primitivity : A Literature Survey

A nonnegative matrix A is said to be primitive if there exists a positive integer m such that entries in A^m are positive and smallest such m is called the exponent of A: Primitive matrices are useful in the study of finite Markov chains theory. In 1998, in the context of finite Markov chains, Ettore Fornasini and Maria Elena Valcher [6] extended the notion of primitivity for a nonnegative matrix pair (A;B) by considering a positive discrete homogeneous two-dimensional (2D) state model. Further generalization to this notion of primitivity for k-tuple (A1;A2;...;Ak) of nonnegative matrices A1;A2;...;Ak is quite natural and known as k-primitivity. In this paper we present various results on k-primitivity given by different researchers from time to time.