Ranks of submatrices in (skew-)Hermitian solutions to a quaternion matrix equation (Q2511342)

Let \(\mathbb{H}\) be the algebra of the quaternions over \(\mathbb{R} \). This paper considers the matrix equation \(AXA^{\ast}+BYB^{\ast}=C\), where \(A\in\mathbb{H}^{m\times p}\), \(B\in\mathbb{H}^{m\times q}\) and \(C=C^{\ast} \in\mathbb{H}^{m\times m}\) and the unknowns \(X,Y\) are required to be Hermitian quaternion matrices. One step in this problem is to consider a partitioned version with \[ A=\begin{pmatrix} A_{1} & A_{2} \end{pmatrix},\, B = \begin{pmatrix} B_{1} & B_{2} \end{pmatrix}, \,X= \begin{pmatrix} X_{1} & X_{2}\\ X_{2}^{\ast} & X_{4} \end{pmatrix} \text{ and }Y= \begin{pmatrix} Y_{1} & Y_{2}\\ Y_{2}^{\ast} & Y_{4} \end{pmatrix}. \] The authors obtain expressions for the greatest and least values of the ranks of the blocks of \(X\) and \(Y\) (in terms of \(A\), \(B\) and \(C\) and their blocks), and necessary and sufficient conditions on \(A\) and \(B\) under which solutions for the individual blocks \(X_{i}\) and \(Y_{i}\) are unique if a solution exists. Analogous results are obtained when \(C=-C^{\ast}\) and we are looking for skew-Hermitian solutions.