On linear preservers of permanental rank

TL;DR

This paper characterizes linear maps on matrices that preserve or map sets of matrices with fixed or bounded permanental rank, extending understanding of matrix structure preservation.

Contribution

It provides a complete characterization of linear preservers of permanental rank subsets for each rank level, including density results over infinite fields.

Findings

Characterization of linear maps preserving permanental rank sets

Description of bijective maps with rank set inclusion properties

Density of rank-specific matrices in algebraic geometry context

Abstract

Let ${\rm Mat}_n(\mathbb{F})$ denote the set of square $n\times n$ matrices over a field $\mathbb{F}$ of characteristic different from two. The permanental rank ${\rm prk}\,(A)$ of a matrix $A \in{\rm Mat}_{n}(\mathbb{F})$ is the size of the maximal square submatrix in $A$ with nonzero permanent. By $\Lambda^{k}$ and $\Lambda^{\leq k}$ we denote the subsets of matrices $A \in {\rm Mat}_{n}(\mathbb{F})$ with ${\rm prk}\,(A) = k$ and ${\rm prk}\,(A) \leq k$, respectively. In this paper for each $1 \leq k \leq n-1$ we obtain a complete characterization of linear maps $T: {\rm Mat}_{n}(\mathbb{F}) \to {\rm Mat}_{n}(\mathbb{F})$ satisfying $T(\Lambda^{\leq k}) = \Lambda^{\leq k}$ or bijective linear maps satisfying $T(\Lambda^{\leq k}) \subseteq \Lambda^{\leq k}$. Moreover, we show that if $\mathbb{F}$ is an infinite field, then $\Lambda^{k}$ is Zariski dense in $\Lambda^{\leq k}$ and apply this to describe such bijective linear maps satisfying $T(\Lambda^{k}) \subseteq \Lambda^{k}$.