Nonnegative rank-preserving operators (Q2266048)

A nonnegative semidomain S is a subset of the nonnegative real numbers which contains 0, 1, and which is closed under addition and multiplication. The authors consider the set of \(m\times n\) matrices with entries in S and transformations T which satisfy a ''linearity'' condition \(T(\alpha x+\beta y)=\alpha Tx+\beta Ty\) except of course \(\alpha\), \(\beta\in S\). If x is an \(m\times n\) matrix with entries from S then the rank of x is the least integer k for which x has a factorization \(x=yz\) where y is \(m\times k\) and z is \(k\times n\) (both y and z have entries from S). A major result is that if T is a linear operator on the \(m\times n\) matrices over S where min(m,n)\(\geq 4\) then T preserves ranks if and only if T preserves ranks 1, 2, and 4.