Congruences and unitary congruences in matrix theory (Q6174471)

This article is a survey about congruence and \(*\)-congruence for complex matrices, with no detailed proofs. The author includes a description of a canonical form for \(*\)-congruence and discusses unitary congruence (including a statement of Youla's theorem on the block triangularization for unitary congruence, and Takagi's theorem stating that every complex symmetric matrix is unitarily congruent to a diagonal matrix with non-negative diagonal entries). Here, the author stresses the importance of the connection between unitary congruence and consimilarity (which is the matrix relation that arises when considering a change of basis for the representation of a semilinear endomorphism of a complex vector spaces). The article finishes with a discussion on the possibility of a rational algorithm to decide the \(*\)-congruence of two complex matrices.