Related papers: On the distance from a matrix to nilpotents

Two statements concerning $n$-by-$n$ partial isometries are being considered: (i) these matrices are generic, if unitarily irreducible, and (ii) if nilpotent, their numerical ranges are circular disks. Both statements hold for $n\leq 4$ but…

The complex projective space $\mathbb{P}(\mathbb{C}^n)$ can be interpreted as the space of all quantum pure states of size $n$. A distance on this space, interesting from the perspective of quantum physics, can be induced from a classical…

Given an nxn nilpotent matrix over an algebraically closed field K, we prove some properties of the set of all the nxn nilpotent matrices over K which commute with it. Then we give a proof of the irreducibility of the variety of all the…

In this note, we prove that the problem of computing the linear discrepancy of a given matrix is $\Pi_2$-hard, even to approximate within $9/8 - \epsilon$ factor for any $\epsilon > 0$. This strengthens the NP-hardness result of Li and…

Let $A$ be either a complex or real matrix with all distinct eigenvalues. We propose a new method for the computation of both the unstructured and the real-structured (if the matrix is real) distance $w_{\mathbb K}(A)$ (where ${\mathbb…

A question going back to Halmos asks when two approximately commuting matrices of a certain kind are close to exactly commuting matrices of the same kind. It has long been known that there is a winding number obstruction for approximately…

For any $n\ge 2$ and fixed $k\ge 1$, we give necessary and sufficient conditions for an arbitrary nonzero square matrix in the matrix ring $\mathbb{M}_n(\mathbb{F})$ to be written as a sum of an invertible matrix $U$ and a nilpotent matrix…

We consider the number of distinct distances between two finite sets of points in ${\bf R}^k$, for any constant dimension $k\ge 2$, where one set $P_1$ consists of $n$ points on a line $l$, and the other set $P_2$ consists of $m$ arbitrary…

Let $X$ be a compact metric space which is locally absolutely retract and let $\phi: C(X)\to C(Y, M_n)$ be a unital homomorphism, where $Y$ is a compact metric space with ${\rm dim}Y\le 2.$ It is proved that there exists a sequence of $n$…

We study the structured distance to singularity for a given regular matrix pencil $A+sE$, where $(A,E)\in \mathbb S \subseteq (\mathbb C^{n,n})^2$. This includes Hermitian, skew-Hermitian, $*$-even, $*$-odd, $*$-palindromic, T-palindromic,…

We treat the problem of the Frobenius distance evaluation from a given matrix $ A \in \mathbb R^{n\times n} $ with distinct eigenvalues to the manifold of matrices with multiple eigenvalues. On restricting considerations to the rank $ 1 $…

Let $D$ be the set of $n\times n$ positive semidefinite matrices of trace equal to one, also known as the set of density matrices. We prove two results on the hardness of approximating $D$ with polytopes. First, we show that if $0 <…

Let $P$ be a set of $n$ points in the plane that determines at most $n/5$ distinct distances. We show that no line can contain more than $O(n^{43/52}{\rm polylog}(n))$ points of $P$. We also show a similar result for rectangular distances,…

We study the variety of n by n matrices with commutator of rank at most one. We describe its irreducible components; two of them correspond to the pairs of commuting matrices, and n-2 components of smaller dimension corresponding to the…

We show that in the Lorentz mirror model, at any density of mirrors, the probability of a particle starting at the origin to reach distance n is at least 1/(2n+1).

We prove the Box Conjecture for pairs of commuting nilpotent matrices, as formulated by Iarrobino et al [28]. This describes the Jordan type of the dense orbit in the nilpotent commutator of a given nilpotent matrix. Our main tool is the…

This paper addresses to the problem of finding the (minimum) Euclidean distance between two linear varieties. This problem is, usually, solved minimising a target function. We propose a novel approach: to use the Moore-Penrose generalised…

Let $\mathscr{F}$ be a field. A matrix $A$ of order $n \times n$ over $\mathscr{F}$ is a product of two nilpotent matrices if and only if it is singular, except if $A$ is a nonzero nilpotent matrix of order $2 \times 2$. This result was…

A distance matrix $A \in \mathbb R^{n \times m}$ represents all pairwise distances, $A_{ij}=\mathrm{d}(x_i,y_j)$, between two point sets $x_1,...,x_n$ and $y_1,...,y_m$ in an arbitrary metric space $(\mathcal Z, \mathrm{d})$. Such matrices…

We first introduce the Hamming distance between two strings. Then, we apply this concept to the representations of whole numbers in base n for all positive integers n > 2. We claim that a simple formula exists for the sum of all Hamming…