On the phases of a semi-sectorial matrix and the essential phase of a Laplacian (Q6138087)

The authors extend the results of \textit{D. Wang} et al. [Linear Algebra Appl. 593, 152--179 (2020; Zbl 1436.15025)] by investigating phases of semi-sectorial matrices. Note that an \(n\times n\) semi-sectorial matrix does not have \(n\) phases. They extend properties of the phases including those of the Moore-Penrose generalized inverse, compressions, Schur complements, matrix sums, and products. Additionally, a majorization relation is established between the phases of the nonzero eigenvalues of \(AB\) and the phases of the compressions of \(A\) and \(B\), which leads to a generalized matrix small phase theorem. The difficulty is that the matrices \(A\) and \(B\) may have different numbers of phases and \(AB\) may have another different number of nonzero eigenvalues. For the matrices which are not necessarily semi-sectorial, they consider their (largest and smallest) essential phases via a diagonal similarity transformation. Furthermore, they get an expression for the essential phases of a Laplacian matrix of a directed graph.