Upper and lower bounds on norms of functions of matrices (Q957994)

Let \(A\) be an \(n \times n\) matrix. An interesting problem is to find a set \(S\) in the complex plane and positive scalars \(m\) and \(M\) such that for all functions \(p\) in the Hardy space of bounded analytic functions on \(S\) with the norm \(\| p\| _{{\mathcal L}^\infty(S)} = \sup_{z \in S}| p(z)| \) and with the additional requirement that \(p\) is analytic in a neighborhood of each eigenvalue of \(A\), the inequalities \[ m \cdot \inf \{\| f\| _{{\mathcal L}^\infty(S)}: f(A) = p(A)\} \leq \| p(A)\| \leq M \cdot \inf \{\| f\| _{{\mathcal L}^\infty(S)}: f(A) = p(A)\} \] hold. The author shows that for \(2 \times 2\) matrices, if \(S\) is the field of values, then one can take \(m = 1\) and \(M = 2\). She also proves that for a perturbed Jordan block if \(S\) is the unit disk, then \(m = M = 1\). Some difficulties of dealing with the problem above are discussed as well.