English

Sums of two nilpotent quaternionic matrices

Rings and Algebras 2025-08-28 v1

Abstract

Let Q\mathcal{Q} be a quaternion division algebra over a field, and n2n \geq 2 be an integer. In a recent article, de La Cruz et al have proved that every nn-by-nn matrix with entries in Q\mathcal{Q} and pure quaternionic trace is the sum of three nilpotent matrices, and they have shown that some are not the sum of two nilpotent matrices. Here, we give a simple characterization of the square matrices with entries in Q\mathcal{Q} that are the sum of two nilpotent ones. When n3n \geq 3, the special cases involve the scalar matrices and their perturbations by rank 11 matrices, as well as the very special case of 33-by-33 unispectral diagonalisable matrices.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2508.19627,
  title  = {Sums of two nilpotent quaternionic matrices},
  author = {Clément de Seguins Pazzis},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.19627},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

28 pages

R2 v1 2026-07-01T05:07:57.993Z