Let R be a ring and let $n\ge 2$. We discuss the question of whether every element in the matrix ring $M_n(R)$ is a product of (additive) commutators $[x,y]=xy-yx$, for $x,y\in M_n(R)$. An example showing that this does not always hold, even when R is commutative, is provided. If, however, R has Bass stable rank one, then under various additional conditions every element in $M_n(R)$ is a product of three commutators. Further, if R is a division ring with infinite center, then every element in $M_n(R)$ is a product of two commutators. If R is a field and $a\in M_n(R)$, then every element in $M_n(R)$ is a sum of elements of the form $[a,x][a,y]$ with $x,y\in M_n(R)$ if and only if the degree of the minimal polynomial of a is greater than $2$.

Let A be an F-central simple algebra of degree $m^2=\prod _{i=1}^k p_i^{2\alpha _i}$ and G be a subgroup of the unit group of A such that $F[G]=A$. We prove that if G is a central product of two of its subgroups M and N, then $F[M]\otimes _F F[N]\cong F[G]$. Also, if G is locally nilpotent, then G is a central product of subgroups $H_i$, where $[F[H_i]:F]=p_i^{2\alpha _i}$, $A=F[G]\cong F[H_1]\otimes _F \cdots \otimes _F F[H_k]$ and $H_i/Z(G)$ is the Sylow $p_i$-subgroup of $G/Z(G)$ for each i with $1\leq i\leq k$. Additionally, there is an element of order $p_i$ in F for each i with $1\leq i\leq k$.

Every transitive family of subspaces of a vector space of finite dimension $n\ge 2$ over a field $\mathbb {F}$ contains a subfamily which is transitive but has no proper transitive subfamily. Such a subfamily is called minimally transitive. Each has at most $n^2-n+1$ elements. On ${{\mathbb {C}}}^n, n\ge 3$ , a minimally transitive family of subspaces has at least four elements and a minimally transitive family of one-dimensional subspaces has $\tau $ elements where $n+1\le \tau \le 2n-2$ . We show how a minimally transitive family of one-dimensional subspaces arises when it consists of the subspaces spanned by the standard basis vectors together with those spanned by $0$ – $1$ vectors. On a space of dimension four, the set of nontrivial elements of a medial subspace lattice has five elements if it is minimally transitive. On spaces of dimension $12$ or more, the set of nontrivial elements of a medial subspace lattice can have six or more elements and be minimally transitive.

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.

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.

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 $k+1$.

Let $F$ be an algebraically closed field of characteristic $0$ and let $\operatorname{sp}(2l,F)$ be the rank $l$ symplectic algebra of all $2l\times 2l$ matrices $x=\big(\!\begin{smallmatrix}A & B\\ C & -A^{t}\end{smallmatrix}\!\big)$ over $F$, where $A^{t}$ is the transpose of $A$ and $B,C$ are symmetric matrices of order $l$. The commuting graph $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}(\operatorname{sp}(2l,F))$ of $\operatorname{sp}(2l,F)$ is a graph whose vertex set consists of all nonzero elements in $\operatorname{sp}(2l,F)$ and two distinct vertices $x$ and $y$ are adjacent if and only if $xy=yx$. We prove that the diameter of $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}(\operatorname{sp}(2l,F))$ is $4$ when $l>2$.

The low temperature properties of double exchange model in triangular lattice are investigated via truncated polynomial expansion method (TPEM), which reduces the computational complexity and enables parallel computation. We found that for the half-filling case a stable 120° spin configuration phase occurs owing to the frustration of triangular lattice and is further stabilized by antiferromagnetic (AF) su-perexchange interaction, while a transition between a stable ferromagnetic (FM) phase and a unique flux phase with small finite-size effect is induced by AF superexchange interaction for the quarter-filling case.

We give bounds on the distance from a non-zero idempotent to the set of nilpotents in the set of $n\,\times \,n$ matrices in terms of the norm of the idempotent. We construct explicit idempotents and nilpotents which achieve these distances, and determine exact distances in some special cases.

The rank of a vector space $\mathcal{A}$ of $n\times n$-matrices is by definition the maximal rank of an element of $\mathcal{A}$. The space $\mathcal{A}$ is called rank-critical if any matrix space that properly contains $\mathcal{A}$ has a strictly higher rank. This paper exhibits a sufficient condition for rank-criticality, which is then used to prove that the images of certain Lie algebra representations are rank-critical. A rather counter-intuitive consequence, and the main novelty in this paper, is that for infinitely many $n$, there exists an eight-dimensional rank-critical space of $n \times n$-matrices having generic rank $n-1$, or, in other words: an eight-dimensional maximal space of non-invertible matrices. This settles the question, posed by Fillmore, Laurie, and Radjavi in 1985, of whether such a maximal space can have dimension smaller than $n$. Another consequence is that the image of the adjoint representation of any semisimple Lie algebra is rank-critical; in both results, the ground field is assumed to have characteristic zero.

Subadditivity, sublinearity, submultiplicativity, and other conditions are considered for spectra of pairs of operators on a Hilbert space. Sublinearity, for example, is a weakening of the well-known property $L$ and means $\sigma (A\,+\,\lambda B)\,\subseteq \,\sigma (A)\,+\,\lambda \sigma (B)$ for all scalars $\lambda$. The effect of these conditions is examined on commutativity, reducibility, and triangularizability of multiplicative semigroups of operators. A sample result is that sublinearity of spectra implies simultaneous triangularizability for a semigroup of compact operators.

The notion of decompositon class in a semisimple Lie algebra is a common generalization of nilpotent orbits and the set of regular semisimple elements.We prove that the closure of a decomposition class has many properties in common with nilpotent varieties, e.g., its normalization has rational singularities.

The famous Grothendieck simultaneous resolution is related to the decomposition class of regular semisimple elements. We study the properties of the analogous commutative diagrams associated to an arbitrary decomposition class.

Let r(T) denote the spectral radius of the operator T acting on a complex Hilbert space H. Let S be a multiplicative semigroup of operators on H. We say that r is permutable on 𝓢 if r(ABC) = r(BAC), for every A,B,C ∈ 𝓢. We say that r is submultiplicative on 𝓢 if r(AB) ≤ r(A)r(B), for every A, B ∈ 𝓢. It is known that, if r is permutable on 𝓢, then it is submultiplicative. We show that the converse holds in each of the following cases: (i) 𝓢 consists of compact operators (ii) 𝓢 consists of normal operators (iii) 𝓢 is generated by orthogonal projections.

Compact C*-convex subsets of Mn correspond exactly to n-th matrix ranges of operators. The main result of this paper is to discover the “right” analog of linear extreme points, called structural elements, and then to prove a generalised Krein-Milman theorem for C*-convex subsets of Mn. The relationship between structural elements and an earlier attempted generalisation, called C*-extreme points, is examined, solving affirmatively a conjecture of Loebl and Paulsen [8]. An improved bound for a C* -convex version of the Caratheodory theorem for convex sets is also given.

We prove that Choi's map in M3 cannot be written as the sum of a 2-positive map and a 2-copositive map. We also provide other examples of positive maps in Mn which cannot be written as the sum of an n-positive map and a 2-copositive map.