Tropical totally positive matrices

We investigate the tropical analogues of totally positive and totally nonnegative matrices. These arise when considering the images by the nonarchimedean valuation of the corresponding classes of matrices over a real nonarchimedean valued field, like the field of real Puiseux series. We show that the nonarchimedean valuation sends the totally positive matrices precisely to the Monge matrices. This leads to explicit polyhedral representations of the tropical analogues of totally positive and totally nonnegative matrices. We also show that tropical totally nonnegative matrices with a finite permanent can be factorized in terms of elementary matrices. We finally determine the eigenvalues of tropical totally nonnegative matrices, and relate them with the eigenvalues of totally nonnegative matrices over nonarchimedean fields.Comment: The first author has been partially supported by the PGMO Program of FMJH and EDF, and by the MALTHY Project of the ANR Program. The second author is sported by the French Chateaubriand grant and INRIA postdoctoral fellowshi

Positivity properties of Jacobi-Stirling numbers and generalized Ramanujan polynomials

Generalizing recent results of Egge and Mongelli, we show that each diagonal sequence of the Jacobi-Stirling numbers \js(n,k;z) and \JS(n,k;z) is a P\'olya frequency sequence if and only if $z\in [-1, 1]$ and study the $z$-total positivity properties of these numbers. Moreover, the polynomial sequences \biggl\{\sum_{k=0}^n\JS(n,k;z)y^k\biggr\}_{n\geq 0}\quad \text{and} \quad \biggl\{\sum_{k=0}^n\js(n,k;z)y^k\biggr\}_{n\geq 0} are proved to be strongly $\{z,y\}$-log-convex. In the same vein, we extend a recent result of Chen et al. about the Ramanujan polynomials to Chapoton's generalized Ramanujan polynomials. Finally, bridging the Ramanujan polynomials and a sequence arising from the Lambert $W$ function, we obtain a neat proof of the unimodality of the latter sequence, which was proved previously by Kalugin and Jeffrey.Comment: 17 pages, 2 tables, the proof of Lemma 3.3 is corrected, final version to appear in Advances in Applied Mathematic

The inverse eigenvalue problem for symmetric anti-bidiagonal matrices

The inverse eigenvalue problem for real symmetric matrices of the form 0 0 0 . 0 0 * 0 0 0 . 0 * * 0 0 0 . * * 0 . . . . . . . 0 0 * . 0 0 0 0 * * . 0 0 0 * * 0 . 0 0 0 is solved. The solution is shown to be unique. The problem is also shown to be equivalent to the inverse eigenvalue problem for a certain subclass of Jacobi matrices.Comment: 6 pages; miscalculation corrected; acknowledgments adde