Bounds on the exponent of primitivity which depend on the spectrum and the minimal polynomial (Q2365696)

The authors consider bounds on the exponent of primitivity of a nonnegative matrix which depend on the spectrum and the minimal polynomial. Let \(A\) be an \(n \times n\) nonnegative primitive matrix whose minimal polynomial has degree \(m\). They conjecture that a bound on the exponent of primitivity of \(A\) is given by \((m-1)^ 2+ 1\). The authors show that the only case for which they cannot prove the conjecture is when \(m \geq 5\), the number of distinct eigenvalues of \(A\) is \(m-1\) or \(m\), and the directed graph of \(A\) has no circuits of length shorter than \(m-1\), but at least one of its vertices lies on a circuit of length not shorter than \(m\). They also show that \(m(m-1)\) is always a bound on the exponent. To obtain these results the authors prove a lemma which shows that for a nonnegative matrix, the number of its distinct eigenvalues is an upper bound on the length of the shortest circuits in its directed graph.