Brauer's theorem and nonnegative matrices with prescribed diagonal entries

Abstract

The problem of the existence and construction of nonnegative matrices with prescribed eigenvalues and diagonal entries is an important inverse problem, interesting by itself, but also necessary to apply a perturbation result, which has played an important role in the study of certain nonnegative inverse spectral problems. A number of partial results about the problem have been published by several authors, mainly by H. \v{S}migoc. In this paper, the relevance of a Brauer's result, and its implication for the nonnegative inverse eigenvalue problem with prescribed diagonal entries is emphasized. As a consequence, given a list of complex numbers of \v{S}migoc type, or a list $\Lambda = \left\{\lambda _{1},\ldots ,\lambda _{n} \right \}$ with $\operatorname{Re}\lambda _{i}\leq 0,$ $\lambda _{1}\geq -\sum\limits_{i=2}^{n}\lambda _{i}$, and $\left\{-\sum\limits_{i=2}^{n}\lambda _{i},\lambda _{2},\ldots ,\lambda _{n} \right\}$ being realizable; and given a list of nonnegative real numbers $% \Gamma = \left\{\gamma _{1},\ldots ,\gamma _{n} \right\}$, the remarkably simple condition $\gamma _{1}+\cdots +\gamma _{n} = \lambda _{1}+\cdots +\lambda _{n}$ is necessary and sufficient for the existence and construction of a realizing matrix with diagonal entries $\Gamma .$ Conditions for more general lists of complex numbers are also given.