Spectrum nonincreasing maps on matrices (Q1947110)

A function from the set \(M_{n}(\mathbb{C})\) of all complex \(n\times n\) matrices into itself is said to have standard form if there exists an invertible matrix \(S\) such that \(A\longmapsto SAS^{-1}\) for all \(A\) or \(A\longmapsto SA^{t}S^{-1}\) for all \(A\). Let \(\Phi\) be a function from \(M_{n}(\mathbb{C})\) into itself such that \(\Phi(0)=0\) and the spectrum of \(\Phi(A)-\Phi(B)\) is contained in the spectrum of \(A-B\) for all \(A,B\in M_{n}(\mathbb{C})\). It has previously been proved that \(\Phi\) must be of standard form if we assume either (i) \(\Phi\) is continuous (see [\textit{C. Costara}, Linear Algebra Appl. 435, No. 11, 2674--2680 (2011; Zbl 1231.15003)]), or (ii) \(\Phi\) is surjective (see [\textit{M. Bendaoud, M. Douimi} and \textit{M. Sarih}, ``Maps on matrices preserving local spectra'', Linear Multilinear Algebra 61, No. 7, 871--880 (2013; {\url{doi:10\.1080/03081087.2012.716429}})]). In the present paper, the authors prove that \(\Phi\) is of standard form without making any additional assumption on \(\Phi\). A critical step in the proof is that the hypothesis on \(\Phi\) implies that there exists a dense subset \(\mathcal{K}\) of matrices in \(M_{n}(\mathbb{C})\) such that the trace identity \(\operatorname{Tr}(AB)=\operatorname{Tr}(\Phi(A)\Phi(B))\) holds whenever \(A-B\in\mathcal{K}\) (\(\mathcal{K}\) consists of the matrices with \(n\) distinct eigenvalues which are linearly independent over \(\mathbb{Z}\)).