A canonical form for matrices under consimilarity (Q1110611)

Complex \(n\times n\) matrices A, B are said to be consimilar if \(B=S^{- 1}A\bar S\) for some non-singular complex matrix S. This concept arises naturally from comparing the expressions for a semilinear transformation on an n-dimensional complex vector space in two different coordinate systems. The present paper gives a detailed survey, with an extensive bibliography, of the known results on consimilarity. A canonical form for A under consimilarity, closely related to the usual Jordan normal form for \(A\bar A\), is described in section 3. Various applications are given in section 4. For example (Theorem 4.5), A and B are consimilar if, and only if, (a) \(A\bar A\) and \(B\bar B\) are similar and (b) \(A,A\bar A,A\bar AA,...\) have the same respective ranks as \(B,B\bar B,B\bar BB,...\). Again, it is noted that A is consimilar to \(\bar A,\) \(A^{\top}\) and \(A^*\), and that every matrix is consimilar both to a real matrix and to a Hermitian matrix. Altogether, this is a useful and clearly written survey.