Chains of dog-ears for completely positive matrices (Q5940026)

A necessary and sufficient condition to determine the complete positivity of a matrix with a particular graph, in dependence of complete positivity of smaller matrices, is given. Under some singularity assumptions, this condition furnishes a characterization for completely positive matrices with a non-crossing cycle as associated graph. In particular the characterization holds for singular pentadiagonal matrices. The paper is divided into five sections, namely, Introduction, Deletion of a leaf, Deletion of a dog-ear, Non-crossing cycles, and Non-diminishable matrices.