A completion problem over the field of real numbers (Q1593658)

Only some of the cases from the class of completion problems, proposed by \textit{G. N. de Oliveira} [Linear Multilinear Algebra 2, 357-364 (1975; Zbl 0302.15014)], have been solved yet. In this paper, a theorem that solves one particular problem from this class is stated and proved. Let us suppose that we have a matrix \(A \in \mathbb{R}^{m\times n}\) and consider its partitioning into blocks \(A_{11}, A_{12}, A_{21}, A_{22}\), where \(A_{11}\) and \(A_{22}\) are square diagonal submatrices. Assuming that \(A_{12}\) and \(A_{21}\) are fixed, the theorem gives sufficient and necessary conditions for the existence of matrices \(A_{11}\) and \(A_{22}\) such that \(A\) has characteristic polynomial \(f \in R[x]\). In order to complete the proof of the theorem itself, some lemmas of general use together with their proofs are included.