Special cases of a matrix exponential formula (Q1109103)

The paper discusses the following two theorems: Theorem 1: If H, K are \(n\times n\) Hermitian matrices, there exist unitary matrices U and V such that \(e^{iH}e^{iK}=e^{i(UHU^*+VKV^*)}\) where * denotes the adjoint. Theorem 2: If the \(n\times n\) matrices A and B are sufficiently close to 0 then there exist nonsingular matrices S and T such that \(e^ Ae^ B=e^{SAS^{-1}+TBT^{-1}}.\) Both theorems had been proved by the author in earlier work. In this paper proofs are given by elementary techniques for the case where K and B are rank 1 matrices. This leads immediately to corollaries for \(2\times 2\) matrices. It is shown that Theorem 2 is not correct if A and B are too large. It is shown by a counter example that there exist Hermitian matrices H and K such that \(e^{i(H+K)}\neq e^{iU^*HU}e^{iV^*KV}\) for all unitary matrices U and V. However the following result is announced. If the Hermitian matrices H and K are sufficiently close to 0 then \(U=e^{\rho (iH,iK)}\) and \(V=e^{\rho (-iK,-iH)}\) where \(\rho\) (x,y) is an infinite series of iterated Lie commutators of x and y with rational coefficients.