On the boundaries of the determinantal regions of ray pattern matrices (Q924342)

The boundaries of the ray pattern matrices and the complex sign matrices of complex matrices are considered within the sign matrix theory. Suppose a complex number \(a\). Its ray is defined as \(\text{ray}(a)=a/| a| \) if \(a\neq 0\) else \(\text{ray}(0)=0\). Define \(Q_R(A)\), when replacing its entries with their rays, the set of all matrices as the ray pattern class of a complex matrix \(A\) as \(Q_R(A)=\{B\mid \text{ray}(B)= \text{ray}(A)\}\). Denote the complex sign of \(a=x+iy\) as \(\text{csgn}(a)= \text{sgn}(x)+i\,{\text{sgn}}(y)\). Denote \(Q_S(A)\) of \(A\), when replacing its entries with their complex signs, a complex sign pattern class of \(A\) defined as \(Q_S(A)=\{B\mid \text{csgn}(B)=\text{csgn}(A)\}\). The ray determinantal region \(R_A\) of a complex square matrix \(A\) and the complex determinantal region \(S_A\) of \(A\) are defined as \(R_A=\{\det B\mid B\in Q_R(A)\}\) and \(S_A=\{\det B\mid B\in Q_S(A)\}\). The authors show that the boundary of \(R_A\) is a subset of the union of all rays starting at the origin and passing through some one element of \(T(A)\), where \(T(A)\) is a set of nonzero terms in the determinantal expansion of \({\text{ray}}(A)\). A canonical form \(\widetilde A\) of \(A\) (whose entries are all on the axis) is defined, and shown that \(S_A=R_{\widetilde A}\) for all complex square matrices \(A\). The result indicates also the regions \(S_A\) can sometimes be turned to the study of the regions \(R_A\).