Bounded rank perturbations of regular pencils over arbitrary fields (Q2187390)

Let \(\mathbb{F}\) be an arbitrary field and \(\lambda\) be an indeterminate over \(\mathbb{F}\). A square pencil \(E(\lambda):=A+\lambda B\in\mathbb{F}[\lambda]^{(n+r)\times(n+r)}\) is regular if it is invertible over \(\mathbb{F}(\lambda)\) and is said to be strictly equivalent to a pencil \(E^{\prime}(\lambda):=A^{\prime}+\lambda B^{\prime}\) if there exist invertible square matrices \(P,Q\) over \(\mathbb{F}\) such that \(P(A+\lambda B)Q=A^{\prime }+\lambda B^{\prime}\). The list of homogeneous invariant factors (elementary divisors) of a pencil is a list of polynomials \(\alpha_{1},\alpha _{2},...,\alpha_{n+r}\) in \(\mathbb{F[}\lambda]\) such that \(\alpha_{i}\mid\alpha_{i+1}\) for \(i=1,...,n+r-1\) and is an invariant: \(E(\lambda)\) is strictly equivalent to \(E^{\prime}(\lambda)\) if and only if they have the same homogenous invariant factors. The present paper investigates the problem of determining when two different strict equivalence classes can have representatives which differ by a small rank perturbation. The main theorem is the following. Let \(B(\lambda)\) and \(C(\lambda)\) be two regular \((n+r)\times (n+r)\) pencils with homogenous invariant factors \(\beta_{1}\mid\beta_{2}\mid\cdots\mid\beta_{n+r}\) and \(\gamma_{1}\mid\gamma_{2}\mid\cdots\mid \gamma_{n+r}\), respectively. Then there exist matrix pencils \(B^{\prime}(\lambda)\) and \(C^{\prime}(\lambda)\) which are strictly equivalent to \(B(\lambda)\) and \(C(\lambda)\), respectively, such that \text{rank}\((B^{\prime}(\lambda)-C^{\prime}(\lambda))\leq r\) if and only if \(\beta_{i}\mid\gamma_{i+r}\) and \(\gamma_{i}\mid\beta_{n+i}\) for \(i=1,...,n.\) This improves an earlier result [\textit{I. Baragaña} and \textit{A. Roca}, SIAM J. Matrix Anal. Appl. 40, No. 2, 440--453 (2019; Zbl 1416.15012)] by removing a restriction on the field.