Minimal distortion problems for classes of unitary matrices (Q2707308)

The following problem is considered: Given two chains \(\{0\}\subsetneqq M_1\subsetneqq \dots \subsetneqq M_\ell\subset {\mathbb C}^n\) and \(\{0\}\subsetneqq N_1\subsetneqq \dots \subsetneqq N_\ell\subset {\mathbb C}^n\) of subspaces in~\({\mathbb C}^n\), with \(\dim M_j= \dim N_j\), \(j=1,\dots,\ell\), and given a unitarily invariant norm \(\|\cdot\|\) on~\({\mathbb C}^{n\times n}\), compute the value \(\min\{\|U-I\|\): \(U\) is unitary and \(UM_j=N_j\) for \(j=1,\dots,\ell\}\), find a unitary matrix \(U_{\min}\) for which the minimum is attained, and describe the set of all such matrices~\(U_{\min}\). The authors give a formula for the minimum value \(\|U-I_n\|\), and describe the set of all the unitary matrices in the set attaining the minimum, for the Frobenius norm. For other unitary invariant norms, the results are obtained if the subspaces have special structure. Several related matrix minimization problems are also considered.