Commuting nilpotent operators and maximal rank (Q611125)

The main result of this note is the following. Let \(X,X_1 ,\dots,X_s\) be \(d \times d\) pairwise commuting nilpotent matrices over a field of characteristic \(p\) with nilpotencies \(p^n,p^{n_1},\dots,p^{n_s}\) respectively, where \(n \geqslant n_1 \geqslant n_2 \geqslant \dots \geqslant n_s\). Let \(f \in k[t_1,\dots,t_s]\) be a polynomial having no constant or linear terms and \(\tilde X = X + f(X_1 ,\dots,X_s)\). Then the matrix \(X\) is of maximal rank if and only if the matrix \(\tilde X\) is of maximal rank.