Lower bounds for the Perron root of a sum of nonnegative matrices (Q1405646)

Let \(A^{(l)}\) \((l= 1,\dots, k)\) be \(n\times n\) nonnegative matrices with right and left Perron vectors \(u^{(l)}\) and \(v^{(l)}\), respectively, and let \(D^{(l)}\) and \(E^{(l)}\) \((l= 1,\dots, k)\) be positive-definite diagonal matrices of the same order. Extending known results, under the assumption that \[ u^{(1)}\circ v^{(1)}=\cdots= u^{(k)}\circ v^{(k)}\neq 0 \] (where ``\(\circ\)'' denotes the componentwise, i.e., the Hadamard product of vectors) but without requiring that the matrices \(A^{(l)}\) be irreducible, for the Perron root of the sum \(\sum^k_{l=1} D^{(l)} A^{(l)} E^{(l)}\) we derive a lower bound of the form \[ \rho\Biggl(\sum^k_{l=1} D^{(l)} A^{(l)} E^{(l)}\Biggr)\geq \sum^k_{l=1} \beta_l \rho(A^{(l)}),\quad \beta_t> 0. \] Also we prove that, for arbitrary irreducible nonnegative matrices \(A^{(l)}\) \((l= 1,\dots, k)\), \[ \rho\Biggl(\sum^k_{l=1} A^{(l)}\Biggr)\geq \sum^k_{l=1} \alpha_l \rho(A^{(l)}), \] where the coefficients \(\alpha_l> 0\) are specified using an arbitrarily chosen normalized positive vector. The cases of equality in both estimates are analyzed, and some other related results are established.