On a subspace metric based on matrix rank (Q846301)

Let \(\mathbb{C}_{n, 1}\) denote the set of \(n\times 1\) complex matrices. The metric between subspaces \(\mathcal{M}, \mathcal{N}\subseteq \mathbb{C}_{n, 1}\), defines as follows: \[ \delta(\mathcal{M}, \mathcal{N})=\text{rk}({\mathbf P}_{\mathcal{M}}-{\mathbf P}_{\mathcal{N}}), \] where \(\text{rk}(\cdot)\) denotes rank of a matrix argument and \({\mathbf P}_{\mathcal{M}}\) and \({\mathbf P}_{\mathcal{N}}\) are the orthogonal projectors onto the subspaces \(\mathcal{M}\) and \(\mathcal{N}\), respectively. The authors establish various characterizations of the metric \(\delta\). In particular, they obtain an expression for \(\delta(\mathcal{M}, \mathcal{N})\) in terms of the dimensions of two subspaces of \(\mathbb{C}_{n, 1}\), more precisely, they prove that \(\delta(\mathcal{M}, \mathcal{N})=\dim (\mathcal{M}+ \mathcal{N})-\dim(\mathcal{M}\cap \mathcal{N})\). The metric \(\delta\) is also compared with other measures used to characterize subspaces, such as the distance, the Frobenius distance, the direct distance, angle, and minimal angle.