The solution of the equation \(AX + X^{\star}B =0\) (Q1940085)

The authors describe how to find the general solution of the matrix equation \(A \, X + X^{\ast} \, B = 0\), where \(A \in \mathbb C^{m \times n}\) and \(B \in \mathbb C^{n \times m}\) are arbitrary matrices, \(X \in \mathbb C^{n \times m}\) is the unknown, and \(X^{\ast}\) denotes either the transpose or the conjugate transpose of \(X\). First, it is shown that the solution can be obtained in terms of the Kronecker canonical form of the matrix pencil \(A + \lambda \, B^{\ast}\) and the two nonsingular matrices that transform this pencil into its Kronecker canonical form. Also a complete description of the solution is given provided that these two matrices and the Kronecker canonical form of \(A + \lambda \, B^{\ast}\) are known. As a consequence, the dimension of the solution space of the equation is determined in terms of the sizes of the blocks appearing in the Kronecker canonical form of \(A + \lambda \, B^{\ast}\). The general solution of the homogeneous equation \(A \, X + X^{\ast} \, B = 0\) is essential to finding the general solution of \(A \, X + X^{\ast} \, B = C\), which is related to palindromic eigenvalue problems that have attracted considerable attention recently.