On permutations, convex hulls, and normal operators (Q792418)

The convex hull of the unitary orbit of a normal operator on a finite dimensional complex Hilbert space is characterized in terms of the spectrum of the operator. This is used to prove that if A,B and A-B are normal then \(\| A-B\| \leq \max_{\sigma \in S_ n}\| diag(\alpha_ k-\beta_{\sigma(k)})\|\) when \(\alpha_ 1,...,\alpha_ n\) and \(\beta_ 1,...,\beta_ n\) are the eigenvalues of A and B.