On flat portions on the boundary of the numerical range (Q1886527)

The paper is devoted to the problem of appearance of flat portions on the boundary of the numerical range of complex matrices. A constructive criterion for such portions to exist is obtained in case of tridiagonal matrices, along with the resulting upper bound of their numbers, and a particular case of continuant matrices is considered. As an application of these reuslts the case of arbitrary \(3\times 3\) and \(4\times 4\) matrices is considered. It is shown, in particular, that the sharp bound for the number of flat portions on the boundary of the numerical range for \(4\times 4\) matrices is~four (three, if the matrices are assumed unitary irreducible). Some open problems are presented.