The critical exponent for continuous conventional powers of doubly nonnegative matrices (Q551347)

A real symmetric matrix is \textit{doubly nonnegative} (DN) if it is positive semidefinite and (entrywise) nonnegative. Continuous powers (with exponent \(s\geq0\)) of a DN matrix \(A=[a_{ij}]\) are well defined under both conventional matrix multiplication \(A^s\) (defined via the spectral decomposition), and under Hadamard multiplication \(A^{(s)} = [a_{ij}^s]\). In both cases, positive integral powers are well-known to remain DN. The authors tackle the natural question about powers between positive integral powers which leads them to introduce the \textit{critical exponent} of a DN matrix. For example, the (conventional) critical exponent, which is the main focus of this paper, is the least value \(m\in {\mathbb R}_{\geq 0}\), for a given \(n\in{\mathbb N}\), such that \(A^{s}\) is DN for all \(s\geq m\) and all \(n\times n\) matrices \(A\) that are DN. Here is a sample of the results obtained: the authors prove that the conventional critical exponent is finite, that it is at least \(n - 2\), and establish low-coefficient quadratic upper bounds for it. Finally, they conjecture that the conventional critical exponent is \(n-2\), and prove this for \(n\leq5\).