A counterexample to Huang's weak majorization conjecture

Abstract

We give a counterexample to a weak majorization problem, proposed by Z. Huang (Linear Algebra Appl., 434 (2) (2011) 457--462), for singular values of Hadamard products of nonnegative matrices. The problem asks whether, for all nonnegative matrices $A$ and $B$, \begin{equation*} \bigl\{s_j^2(A\Had B)\bigr\} \prec_w \bigl\{s_j(A\Had A)s_j(B\Had B)\bigr\} \end{equation*} holds, where $\Had$ denotes the Hadamard product, ${\prec }_w$ means weak majorization, and $s_j(\cdot )$ is the $j$th largest singular value of a matrix. To answer this problem, we construct two $3\times 3$ entrywise positive symmetric matrices. We give rigorous upper and lower bounds for the relevant singular-value sums by Sturm's theorem, and show that the inequality fails for the partial sum with $k=2$.

5 pages