Linear maps preserving products of positive or Hermitian matrices (Q865419)

The authors classify bijective linear maps that preserve the set of complex matrices, which can be written as a product of two special-type matrices. Specifically, they considered the set \(\Omega_{++}:=\{AB;\;\;A,B\geq 0\}\) of all matrices that are the product of two nonnegative semidefinite ones. It is known, for example, that this coincides with the set of diagonalizable matrices that have only nonnegative eigenvalues. The main idea of the proof is a nice reduction to nilpotent preserving maps. With a similar technique they further classify bijective linear preservers of \(\Omega_{\ast\ast}:=\{AB;\;\;A=A^\ast,\;B=B^\ast\}\). It is interesting to observe that the obtained results are almost the same as for commutativity preserving linear bijections. The authors also study singular preservers of \(\Omega_{++}\), \(\Omega_{\ast\ast}\), and \(\Omega_{+\ast}:=\{AB;\;\;A\geq 0,\;B=B^\ast\}\), and obtain some properties on their kernels. As a corollary they classify preservers of the set \(\Omega_{+\ast}\) without bijectivity assumption. Reviewer's Remark: There seems to be a misprint in the proof of Theorem 2.10. If \(\alpha_1\not=\alpha_k\) then indeed \(H+E_{1k}\) is similar to \(H\). However, if \(\alpha_1=\alpha_k\) then \(H+E_{1k}\) is not similar to \(H\). In this case, \(E_{2k}\) could be used in place of~\(E_{1k}\).