Burnside's theorem in the setting of general fields (Q2424595): Difference between revisions

Several extensions of Burnside's theorem about irreducibility of matrix semigroups over algebraically closed fields were obtained recently. In the present work the authors consider semigroups \(\mathcal{S}\subseteq M_n(\mathbb{F})\), over general fields \(\mathbb{F}\), such that every matrix in \(\mathcal{S}\) is triangularizable. Using a result of \textit{J. Bernik} [Arch. Math. 88, No. 6, 481--490 (2007; Zbl 1122.15017)] they show that irreducibility of \(\mathcal{S}\) (that is, matrices from \(\mathcal{S}\) have no common nontrivial invariant subspace) implies absolute irreducibility (that is, the span of \(\mathcal{S}\) equals \(M_n(\mathbb{F})\) or equivalently, \(\mathcal{S}\) remains irreducible under any field extension of \(\mathbb{F}\)). They also prove that this result is equivalent to Bernik's. Actually, a bit more is obtained: if \(\mathbb{F}\subseteq\mathbb{K}\) are fields (possibly not algebraically closed) and \(\mathcal{S}\subseteq M_n(\mathbb{K})\) is an irreducible semigroup of triangularizable matrices such that all the eigenvalues of each \(S\in\mathcal{S}\) lie in \(\mathbb{F}\), then Alg\(_{\mathbb{F}}\mathcal{S}\subseteq M_n(\mathbb{K})\) is conjugate to \(M_n(\mathbb{F})\subseteq M_n(\mathbb{K})\). The authors also show that the real algebra of \(n\)-by-\(n\) quaternion matrices, when embedded inside \(M_{4n}(\mathbb{R})\), is an irreducible subalgebra spanned by the identity and square-zero elements. This does not happen with finite fields \(\mathbb{F}\) where the only such subalgebra is the full matrix algebra \(M_n(\mathbb{F})\) (see [\textit{H. Radjavi} and \textit{B.R. Yahaghi}, Linear Algebra Appl. 436, No. 7, 2001--2007 (2012; Zbl 1236.15040)]).