Spanning and independence properties of frame partitions (Q2845035)

The research in the paper was motivated by the celebrated Kadison-Singer problem (KSP) which had not been solved at the time (see [\textit{A. Marcus, D. A. Spielman} and \textit{N. Srivastava}, ``Interlacing families. II: Mixed characteristic polynomials and the Kadison-Singer problem'', \url{arXiv:1306.3969}] for the solution of KSP). The KSP is equivalent to the Feichtinger conjecture that purports the existence of a partition of an infinite equal norm frame into finitely many Riesz basic sequences. The KSP also has several finite dimensional reformulations.NEWLINENEWLINEThe authors of this paper answer several questions concerning the decomposition of finite frames into linearly independent and/or spanning sets.NEWLINENEWLINEThe following two theorems represent some of the main results of the paper.NEWLINENEWLINETheorem 3.1. Let \(\{f_i\}_{i\in I}\) be an equal norm Parseval frame for an \(N\) dimensional Hilbert space with \(|I| = rN+k\), \(0\leq k < N\). Then there is a partition \(\{I_i\}_{i=1}^{r+1}\) of \(I\) so that for \(i\in\{2,3,\dots, r+1\}\), \(\{f_j\}_{j\in I_i}\) is a linearly independent spanning set and \(\{f_j\}_{j\in I_1}\) is linearly independent.NEWLINENEWLINETheorem 3.7. Let \(\{f_i\}_{i\in I}\) be a finite collection of vectors in a finite dimensional vector space. Assume:NEWLINENEWLINE(1) \(\{f_i\}_{i\in I}\) can be partitioned into \(r+1\) linearly independent sets, andNEWLINENEWLINE(2) \(\{f_i\}_{i\in I}\) can be partitioned into a set and \(r\) linearly independent spanning sets.NEWLINENEWLINEThen there is a partition \(\{I_i\}_{i=1}^{r+1}\) of \(I\) so that for \(i\in\{2,3,\dots, r+1\}\), \(\{f_j\}_{j\in I_i}\) is a linearly independent spanning set and \(\{f_j\}_{j\in I_1}\) is a linearly independent set.