Field of optimal quotients and Hermitianity (Q1713339)

Suppose that two \(n\times n\) complex matrices \(M, N\) are linearly independent such that there exist nonsingular linear combinations of them. The field of optimal quotients for the eigenvalue problem \(Mx = \lambda Nx\) consists of the complex numbers in the polar form \(\frac{q^*N^*Mq}{|q^*N^*Mq|}\frac{\|Mq\|}{\|Nq\|}\) with nonzero \(q \in \mathbb{C}^n\) whenever \(q^*N^*Mq \neq 0\). If \(Mq = 0\) (resp., \(Nq = 0\)) for \(q\neq 0\), we assume the optimal quotient to have the value \(0\) (resp., \(\infty\)). The authors investigate some properties of the field of optimal quotients such as convexity, connectedness and continuity. They show that the field of optimal quotients of linear combinations of \(M\) and \(N\) carry a lot of spectral information. They introduce a notion of normality for the generalized eigenvalue problem and then study the vanishing of the planar dimension of the field of optimal quotients, which allows to formulate the Hermitian and unitary generalized eigenvalue problems.