Infinitely divisible nonnegative matrices, $M$-matrices, and the embedding problem for finite state stationary Markov Chains

Abstract

This paper explicitly details the relation between $M$-matrices, nonnegative roots of nonnegative matrices, and the embedding problem for finite-state stationary Markov chains. The set of nonsingular nonnegative matrices with arbitrary nonnegative roots is shown to be the closure of the set of matrices with matrix roots in $\mathcal{I}\mathcal{M}$. The methods presented here employ nothing beyond basic matrix analysis, however it answers a question regarding $M$-matrices posed over 30 years ago and as an application, a new characterization of the set of all embeddable stochastic matrices is obtained as a corollary.