On a question of Bhatia and Kittaneh (Q445859)

This paper settles in the affirmative a question of Bhatia and Kittaneh. For positive semidefinite \(n\times n\) matrices \(P\) and \(Q\), \(\sqrt {\sigma_r(PQ)} \leq \frac 12\lambda_r(P+Q)\) holds for \(r=1, \dots, n\) where \(\sigma_k(M)\) denotes the \(k\)th largest singular values of \(M\) and \(\lambda_k(H)\) denotes the \(k\)th largest eigenvalue of a Hermitan matrix. The consequence \(\|| \,|AB|^{1/2}\, \|| \leq \frac 12 \|| A+B\||\) is true for all unitarily invariant norm \(\||\cdot\||\). The proof uses the Schur complement.