Refinements of the Schur inequality for principal characters (Q1913645)

Let \(G\) be a subgroup of the symmetric group of degree \(n\) and let \(d^G\) be the following function of an \(n \times n\) complex matrix \(A\): \(d^G (A) = \Sigma \Pi a_{i \sigma (i)}\), where the product is taken over all \(1 \leq i \leq n\) and the sum over all \(\sigma \in G\). The Schur inequality asserts that \(d^G (A) \geq \text{det} A\) if \(A\) is positive definite. The author proves a result which refines this inequality and improves on some results of \textit{R. B. Bapat} [Linear Multilinear Algebra 30, No. 3, 205-208 (1991; Zbl 0749.15002)], \textit{J. W. Bunce} [ibid. 30, No. 1/2, 5-11 (1991; Zbl 0742.15008)] and \textit{M. Marcus} and \textit{M. Sandy} [ibid. 23, No. 3, 233-249 (1988; Zbl 0655.15029)].