Linear preservers of polynomial numerical hulls of matrices (Q2419058)

Let $M_{n}$ be the algebra of all $n\times n$ complex matrices and let $A^{t} $ and $A^{\ast }$ denote the transpose matrix and the conjugate transpose matrix of $A\in M_{n}$, respectively. Let $k$ be a positive integer and $\mathbb{P}_{k}$ the set of all scalar polynomials of degree $k$ or less. The polynomial numerical hull of order $k$ of $A\in M_{n}$ is defined as the set \[ V^{k}(A)=\left\{ \lambda \in \mathbb{C}:\left\vert p(\lambda )\right\vert \leq \left\Vert p(A)\right\Vert \text{ for all }p\in \mathbb{P}_{k}\right\} . \] \par The authors characterize linear preservers of polynomial numerical hulls of order $k$, i.e., they describe the form of linear maps $\varphi :M_{n}\rightarrow M_{n}$ satisfying $V^{k}(A)=V^{k}(\varphi (A))$ for all $A\in M_{n}$. Let first $k\geq n$ and let $A\in M_{n}$ be arbitrary. The authors first note that by a known result $V^{k}(A)$ then reduces to $\sigma (A)$, the spectrum of $A$, and thus if $\varphi :M_{n}\rightarrow M_{n}$ is a linear preserver of polynomial numerical hull of order $k$, then there exists a nonsingular matrix $S\in M_{n}$ such that either $\varphi (A)=S^{-1}AS$ for all $A\in M_{n}$, or $\varphi (A)=S^{-1}A^{t}S$ for all $A\in M_{n}$ (see Theorem 3 in [\textit{M. Marcus} and \textit{B. N. Moyls}, Can. J. Math. 11, 61--66 (1959; Zbl 0086.01703)]). The authors thus reduce the problem to the case where $1\leq k\leq n-1$. First, some auxiliary results are presented. For example, the authors show that if $k\in \mathbb{N}$ and $\varphi :M_{n}\rightarrow M_{n}$ is a linear preserver of polynomial numerical hull of order $k$, then $\varphi $ is bijective and unital map. They also prove that if $2\leq k\in \mathbb{N}$ and $\varphi :M_{n}\rightarrow M_{n}$ is a linear preserver of polynomial numerical hull of order $k$, then tr$(H)=$ tr$(\varphi (H))$ for all Hermitian matrices $H\in M_{n}$ (here tr$(H)$ denotes the trace of $H\in M_{n}$). The authors conclude the paper with the statement and the proof of the main result which follows. Let $n,k$ be positive integers, $n\geq 2$, and $k\leq n-1$. Let $\varphi :M_{n}\rightarrow M_{n}$ be a linear map. Then $V^{k}(A)=V^{k}(\varphi (A))$ for all $A\in M_{n}$ if and only if there exists a unitary matrix $U\in M_{n} $ such that either $\varphi (A)=U^{\ast }AU$ for all $A\in M_{n}$, or $\varphi (A)=U^{\ast }A^{t}U$ for all $A\in M_{n}$.