Some notes on de Oliveira's determinantal conjecture (Q583324)

The conjecture mentioned in the title claims that \(\det (A+UBU^{-1})\) is a convex combination of the points \(z_{\sigma}=\prod^{n}_{j=1}(a_ j+b_{\sigma (j)}),\) where \(A=diag(a_ j)\), \(B=diag(b_ j)\), U is unitary, and \(\sigma\) varies over the permutations of \(\{\) 1,2,...,n\(\}\). It arises from a particular case proved by \textit{M. Fiedler} [Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 30, 27-31 (1971; Zbl 0277.15010)], where the matrices A and B are real. The authors describe some other partial results obtained since then, and verify the conjecture in the case where the \(z_{\sigma}'s\) are collinear. A related problem involving the compounds of U and permutation matrices is also studied.