Intrinsic products and factorizations of matrices (Q2463606)

The product of a row vector and a column vector is called intrinsic, if there is at most one nonzero product of the corresponding coordinates. Analogously we speak about intrinsic products of two or more matrices, as well as about intrinsic factorization of matrices. Thus intrinsic multiplication is sum-free multiplication. In general, intrinsic multiplication is not associative. A product \(ABC\) is called completely intrinsic, if both products \(AB\) and \(BC\) are intrinsic. The first part of this paper studies a class of completely intrinsic matrices, so-called complementary basic matrices (CB-matrices). It is shown that CB-matrices have a complementary zig-zag-shape, and that any CB-Matrix of a given complementary zig-zag-shape is uniquely determined by all its boundary entries subject to the condition that all the peak entries are distinct from zero. Thus it is interesting to investigate the properties of complementary zig-zag-shapes. For this purpose the theory of directed graphs is used to interprete properties of the complementary zig-zag-shapes. The paper also presents some important examples, like companion matrices and sign-nonsingular matrices.