On convergence of infinite matrix products with alternating factors from two sets of matrices (Q1727306)

Summary: We consider the problem of convergence to zero of matrix products \(A_n B_n \cdots A_1 B_1\) with factors from two sets of matrices, \(A_i \in \mathcal{A}\) and \(B_i \in \mathcal{B}\), due to a suitable choice of matrices \(\{B_i \}\). It is assumed that for any sequence of matrices \(\{A_i \}\) there is a sequence of matrices \(\{B_i \}\) such that the corresponding matrix products \(A_n B_n \cdots A_1 B_1\) converge to zero. We show that, in this case, the convergence of the matrix products under consideration is uniformly exponential; that is, \(\|A_n B_n \cdots A_1 B_1\| \leq C \lambda^n\), where the constants \(C > 0\) and \(\lambda \in(0,1)\) do not depend on the sequence \(\{A_i \}\) and the corresponding sequence \(\{B_i \}\). Other problems of this kind are discussed and open questions are formulated.