The critical exponent for generalized doubly nonnegative matrices

It is known that the critical exponent (CE) for conventional, continuous powers of $n$-by-$n$ doubly nonnegative (DN) matrices is $n-2$. Here, we consider the larger class of diagonalizable, entry-wise nonnegative $n$-by-$n$ matrices with nonnegative eigenvalues (GDN). We show that, again, a CE exists and are able to bound it with a low-coefficient quadratic. However, the CE is larger than in the DN case; in particular, 2 for $n=3$. There seems to be a connection with the index of primitivity, and a number of other observations are made and questions raised. It is shown that there is no CE for continuous Hadamard powers of GDN matrices, despite it also being $n-2$ for DN matrices

Minkowski sums and Hadamard products of algebraic varieties

We study Minkowski sums and Hadamard products of algebraic varieties. Specifically we explore when these are varieties and examine their properties in terms of those of the original varieties.Comment: 25 pages, 7 figure

Tropical bounds for eigenvalues of matrices

We show that for all k = 1,...,n the absolute value of the product of the k largest eigenvalues of an n-by-n matrix A is bounded from above by the product of the k largest tropical eigenvalues of the matrix |A| (entrywise absolute value), up to a combinatorial constant depending only on k and on the pattern of the matrix. This generalizes an inequality by Friedland (1986), corresponding to the special case k = 1.Comment: 17 pages, 1 figur