Linear maps on matrices preserving parallel pairs

TL;DR

This paper characterizes linear maps on matrices that preserve pairs of matrices with specific spectral norm properties, revealing that most such maps are scaled isometries or involve transposition, except in the special 2x2 case.

Contribution

It provides a complete classification of linear maps preserving parallel and TEA pairs on matrices, extending understanding of spectral norm preservers.

Findings

Maps preserving TEA pairs are scaled isometries or involve transposition.

Maps preserving parallel pairs include scaled isometries and rank-one modifications.

The 2x2 case is more complex with additional preserving maps.

Abstract

Two (real or complex) $m\times n$ matrices $A$ and $B$ are said to be parallel (resp. triangle equality attaining, or TEA in short) with respect to the spectral norm $\|\cdot\|$ if $\|A+ \mu B\| = \|A\| + \|B\|$ for some scalar $\mu$ with $|\mu|=1$ (resp. $\mu=1$). We study linear maps $T$ on $m\times n$ matrices preserving parallel (resp. TEA) pairs, i.e., $T(A)$ and $T(B)$ are parallel (resp. TEA) whenever $A$ and $B$ are parallel (resp. TEA). It is shown that when $m,n \ge 2$ and $(m,n) \ne (2,2)$, a nonzero linear map $T$ preserving TEA pairs if and only if it is a positive multiple of a linear isometry, namely, $T$ has the form $$(1) \quad A \mapsto \gamma UAV \quad \quad \text{or} \quad \quad (2) \quad A \mapsto \gamma UA^{t} V \quad (\text{in this case}, m = n),$$ for a positive number $\gamma$, and unitary (or real orthogonal) matrices $U$ and $V$ of appropriate sizes. Linear maps preserving parallel pairs are those carrying form (1), (2), or the form $$ (3) \ A \mapsto f(A) Z$$ for a linear functional $f$ and a fixed matrix $Z$. The case when $(m,n) = (2,2)$ is more complicated. There are linear maps of $2\times 2$ matrices preserving parallel pairs or TEA pairs neither of the form (1), (2) nor (3) above. Complete characterization of such maps is given with some intricate computation and techniques in matrix groups.