Related papers: The Procesi-Schacher conjecture and Hilbert's 17th…
We equip the complex polynomial algebra C[t] with the involution which is the identity on C and sends t to -t. Answering a question raised by V.G. Kac, we show that every hermitian or skew-hermitian matrix over this algebra is congruent to…
Hilbert's ternary quartic theorem states that every nonnegative degree 4 homogeneous polynomial in three variables can be written as a sum of three squares of homogeneous quadratic polynomials. We give a linear-algebraic approach to…
In characteristic two, it is shown that a central simple algebra of degree equal to a power of two with anisotropic orthogonal involution is totally decomposable, if it becomes either anisotropic or metabolic over all extensions of the…
Recently Lieb and Seiringer showed that the Bessis-Moussa-Villani conjecture from quantum physics can be restated in the following purely algebraic way: The sum of all words in two positive semidefinite matrices where the number of each of…
This article concerns commutative algebras over a field $k$ of characteristic zero which are finite dimensional as vectorspaces, and particularly those of such algebras which are graded. Here the term graded is applied to non-negatively…
We suggest the point of view that the Schubert classes of the affine Grassmannian of a simple algebraic group should be considered as Schur-positive symmetric functions. In particular, we give a geometric explanation of the Schur positivity…
In a k-linear triangulated category (where k is a field) we show that the existence of Auslander-Reiten triangles implies that objects are determined, up to shift, by knowing dimensions of homomorphisms between them. In most cases the…
A famous conjecture of Artin asserts that any integer $a$ that is neither $-1$ nor a square should be a primitive root (mod $p$) for a positive proportion of primes $p$. Moreover, using a heuristic argument, Artin guessed an explicit…
Quillen proved that, if a Hermitian bihomogeneous polynomial is strictly positive on the unit sphere, then repeated multiplication of the standard sesquilinear form to this polynomial eventually results in a sum of Hermitian squares.…
For any partition of a positive integer we consider the chess (or draughts) colouring of its associated Ferrers graph. Let b denote the total number of black unit squares, and w the number of white squares. In this note we characterize all…
Eisenbud and Harris conjectured in 1982 that an algebraic curve of high genus lies on a surface of low degree (which they proved for curves of very large degree). They observed constraints on the Hilbert function of a general hyperplane…
We present simple conditions which guarantee a geometric convolution algebra to behave like a variant of the quasi-hereditary algebra. In particular, standard modules of the affine Hecke algebras of type $\mathsf{BC}$, and the quiver Schur…
We classify Artin-Schreier extensions of valued fields with non-trivial defect according to whether they are connected with purely inseparable extensions with non-trivial defect, or not. We use this classification to show that in positive…
In 1995, Reznick showed an important variant of the obvious fact that any positive semidefinite (real) quadratic form is a sum of squares of linear forms: If a form (of arbitrary even degree) is positive definite then it becomes a sum of…
Let $H$ be a positive semi-definite matrix partitioned in $\beta\times \beta$ Hermitian blocks, $H=[A_{s,t}]$, $1\le s,t,\le \beta$. Then, for all symmetric norms, {equation*} \| H \| \le \| \sum_{s=1}^{\beta} A_{s,s} \|. {equation*} The…
A hermitian algebra is a unital associative ${\mathbb C}$-algebra endowed with an involution such that the spectra of self-adjoint elements are contained in ${\mathbb R}$. In the case of an algebra ${\mathcal A}$ endowed with a…
A long-standing conjecture asserts that the polynomial \[p(t) = \text{Tr}[(A+tB)^m]\] has nonnegative coefficients whenever $m$ is a positive integer and $A$ and $B$ are any two $n \times n$ positive semidefinite Hermitian matrices. The…
A well-known open problem asks to show that $2^n+5$ is composite for almost all values of $n$. This was proposed by Gil Kalai as a possible Polymath project, and was posed originally by Christopher Hooley. We show that, assuming GRH and a…
Bernstein-Schwarzman conjectured that the quotient of a complex affine space by an irreducible complex crystallographic group generated by reflections is a weighted projective space. The conjecture was proved by Schwarzman and…
The notion of completely positive invariant conjugate-bilinear map in a partial *-algebra is introduced and a generalized Stinespring theorem is proven. Applications to the existence of integrable extensions of *-representations of…