Sign patterns with a nest of positive principal minors (Q417532)

Given \(A=[a_{ij}]\in M_{n}(\mathbb{R})\), an array with entries \(\alpha_{ij}=sign\;a_{ij}\in \{ +, -, 0 \} \) is considered as its sign pattern \(\mathcal{A}\). For convenience, they identify \(\mathcal{A}\) with sign pattern class of A, that is, the set \(\{B=[b_{ij}]\in M_{n}(\mathbb{R}):sign\;b_{ij}=sign\;a_{ij}\) for all i,j \(\}\) and they write \(A\in \mathcal{A}\). Sign pattern \(\mathcal{A}\) requires property \(\chi\) if every \(B\in \mathcal{A}\) has property \(\chi\), and \(\mathcal{A}\) allows property \(\chi\) if there exists \(B\in \mathcal{A}\) that has property \(\chi\). A matrix \(A\) possesses a leading positive nest if the leading principal minors of \(A\) are positive. By omitting the term leading they mean that some permutation similarity \(PAP^{T}\) of \(A\) has a leading positive nest. A matrix \(A\) is positive stable if every eigenvalue of \(A\) has positive real part. A sign pattern that allows positive stability is called a potentially (positive) stable sign pattern. In this paper, the authors are interested in sign patterns that require a positive nest and sign patterns that allow a positive nest. Given \(\alpha \subseteq \{ 1,2,...,n\}\), let \(A[\alpha]\) and \(A(\alpha)\) denote the complementary principal submatrices of \(A\) indexed by \(\alpha\) and \(\{ 1,2,...,n\} \backslash \alpha\), respectively. It is always assumed that the elements of \(\alpha\) are arranged in increasing order. A similar notation is adopted for \(\mathcal{A}\); \(\mathcal{A}[\alpha]\) is a principal submatrix of \(\mathcal{A}\). The authors show that for each \(\alpha \subseteq \{ 1,2,...,n\}\) and each \(A\in \mathcal{A}\), \(detA[\alpha]detA(\alpha)\geq 0\), where \(\mathcal{A}\) is an \(n\times n\) sign pattern that requires a positive nest. They also show that the diagonal entries of every sign pattern \(\mathcal{A}\) that requires a positive nest are nonnegative. Furthermore, they give the connection of sign patterns with all diagonal entries positive that require a positive nest to the classes of sign nonsingular, \(P\)-matrices, \(Q\)-matrices. Then they give a description of more general sign patterns that require a positive nest and then they give also a characterization. Let \(\mathcal{A}\) be the direct sum of potentially stable sign patterns and sign patterns that allow a positive nest. Then the authors show that every permutation similarity of every superpattern of \(\mathcal{A}\) is potentially stable. This makes clear that sign patterns that do not allow a positive nest may be potentially stable.