Joint zero sets and ranges of several Hermitian forms over complex and quaternionic scalars (Q1827498): Difference between revisions

The aim of the paper is to study some problems concerning the connectedness and convexity of some sets associated with a vectorial Hermitian form \(h:V\to \mathbb R^{n}\) (each component is a Hermitian form) on an inner product space \(V\) over \(\mathbb F=\mathbb C\) or \(\mathbb H\), the quaternions. The problems that are studied are related to classical works of \textit{O. Toeplitz} [Math. Z. 2, 187--197 (1918; JFM 46.0157.02)] and \textit{F. Hausdorff} [Math. Z. 3, 314--316 (1919; JFM 47.0088.02)]. One denotes as \(V_{+}\) and \(V_{1}\) the subsets of \(V\) of nonzero and norm one vectors respectively and by \(Z=h^{-1}(0)\), \(Z_{+}=V_{+}\cap Z\) and \(Z_{1}=V_{1}\cap Z\). The path connectedness of the sets \(Z\), \(Z_{+}\) and \(Z_{1}\) is studied. Denoting by \(d\) the dimension of \(\mathbb F\) as a real space, the authors prove that for \(\mathbb F=\mathbb C\) or \(\mathbb H\), if \(n<d\) or \(n\leq d\), provided that \(\dim V>2\), then \(Z_{+}\) and \(Z_{1}\) are path connected. The case \(\mathbb F=\mathbb C\) is known from [\textit{Y. Lyubich} and \textit{A. Markus}, Positivity 1, No. 3, 239--254 (1997; Zbl 0891.15023)], but the proof in the paper under review is simpler. The authors give also more elementary proofs contained in [\textit{P. Binding}, Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 94, 581--584 (1985; Zbl 0572.55014)] of the fact that the joint range \(W_{1}=h(V_{1})\) is convex for \(n\leq d\) and for \(n\leq d+1\), provided that \(\dim V>2\). The case \(\dim V=1\) is also studied by the authors and some examples concerning the optimality of their results are given.