Williamson’s theorem states that for any $2n \times 2n$ real positive definite matrix A, there exists a $2n \times 2n$ real symplectic matrix S such that $S^TAS=D \oplus D$, where D is an $n\times n$ diagonal matrix with positive diagonal entries known as the symplectic eigenvalues of A. Let H be any $2n \times 2n$ real symmetric matrix such that the perturbed matrix $A+H$ is also positive definite. In this paper, we show that any symplectic matrix $\tilde {S}$ diagonalizing $A+H$ in Williamson’s theorem is of the form $\tilde {S}=S Q+\mathcal {O}(\|H\|)$, where Q is a $2n \times 2n$ real symplectic as well as orthogonal matrix. Moreover, Q is in symplectic block diagonal form with the block sizes given by twice the multiplicities of the symplectic eigenvalues of A. Consequently, we show that $\tilde {S}$ and S can be chosen so that $\|\tilde {S}-S\|=\mathcal {O}(\|H\|)$. Our results hold even if A has repeated symplectic eigenvalues. This generalizes the stability result of symplectic matrices for non-repeated symplectic eigenvalues given by Idel, Gaona, and Wolf [Linear Algebra Appl., 525:45–58, 2017].

A convex cone is homogeneous if its automorphism group acts transitively on the interior of the cone. Cones that are homogeneous and self-dual are called symmetric. Conic optimization problems over symmetric cones have been extensively studied, particularly in the literature on interior-point algorithms, and as the foundation of modelling tools for convex optimization. In this paper we consider the less well-studied conic optimization problems over cones that are homogeneous but not necessarily self-dual.

We start with cones of positive semidefinite symmetric matrices with a given sparsity pattern. Homogeneous cones in this class are characterized by nested block-arrow sparsity patterns, a subset of the chordal sparsity patterns. Chordal sparsity guarantees that positive define matrices in the cone have zero-fill Cholesky factorizations. The stronger properties that make the cone homogeneous guarantee that the inverse Cholesky factors have the same zero-fill pattern. We describe transitive subsets of the cone automorphism groups, and important properties of the composition of log-det barriers with the automorphisms.

Next, we consider extensions to linear slices of the positive semidefinite cone, and review conditions that make such cones homogeneous. An important example is the matrix norm cone, the epigraph of a quadratic-over-linear matrix function. The properties of homogeneous sparse matrix cones are shown to extend to this more general class of homogeneous matrix cones.

We then give an overview of the algebraic theory of homogeneous cones due to Vinberg and Rothaus. A fundamental consequence of this theory is that every homogeneous cone admits a spectrahedral (linear matrix inequality) representation.

We conclude by discussing the role of homogeneous structure in primal–dual symmetric interior-point methods, contrasting this with the well-developed algorithms for symmetric cones that exploit the strong properties of self-scaled barriers, and with symmetric primal–dual methods for general convex cones.

Consider two-type linear-fractional branching processes in varying environments with asymptotically constant mean matrices. Let $\nu$ be the extinction time. Under certain conditions, we show that both $\mathbb{P}(\nu=n)$ and $\mathbb{P}(\nu>n)$ are asymptotically the same as some functions of the products of spectral radii of the mean matrices. We also give an example for which $\mathbb{P}(\nu=n)$ decays with various speeds such as ${c}/({n^{1/2}\log n)^2}$ , ${c}/{n^\beta}$ , $\beta >1$ , which are very different from those of homogeneous multitype Galton–Watson processes.

Motivated by considerations of the quadratic orthogonal bisectional curvature, we address the question of when a weighted graph (with possibly negative weights) has nonnegative Dirichlet energy.

We show that the elements of the dual of the Euclidean distance matrix cone can be described via an inequality on a certain weighted sum of its eigenvalues.

A celebrated theorem of Douglas Lind states that a positive real number is equal to the spectral radius of some integral primitive matrix, if and only if, it is a Perron algebraic integer. Given a Perron number p, we prove that there is an integral irreducible matrix with spectral radius p, and with dimension bounded above in terms of the algebraic degree, the ratio of the first two largest Galois conjugates, and arithmetic information about the ring of integers of its number field. This arithmetic information can be taken to be either the discriminant or the minimal Hermite-like thickness. Equivalently, given a Perron number p, there is an irreducible shift of finite type with entropy $\log (p)$ defined as an edge shift on a graph whose number of vertices is bounded above in terms of the aforementioned data.

In this note, we give a new property of de Branges–Rovnyak kernels. As the main theorem, it is shown that the exponential of de Branges–Rovnyak kernel is strictly positive definite if the corresponding Schur class function is nontrivial.

Using an idea of Doug Lind, we give a lower bound for the Perron–Frobenius degree of a Perron number that is not totally real, in terms of the layout of its Galois conjugates in the complex plane. As an application, we prove that there are cubic Perron numbers whose Perron–Frobenius degrees are arbitrary large, a result known to Lind, McMullen and Thurston. A similar result is proved for bi-Perron numbers.

A basic problem in the theory of partially ordered vector spaces is to characterise those cones on which every order-isomorphism is linear. We show that this is the case for every Archimedean cone that equals the inf-sup hull of the sum of its engaged extreme rays. This condition is milder than existing ones and is satisfied by, for example, the cone of positive operators in the space of bounded self-adjoint operators on a Hilbert space. We also give a general form of order-isomorphisms on the inf-sup hull of the sum of all extreme rays of the cone, which extends results of Artstein–Avidan and Slomka to infinite-dimensional partially ordered vector spaces, and prove the linearity of homogeneous order-isomorphisms in a variety of new settings.

We consider homogeneous multiaffine polynomials whose coefficients are the Plücker coordinates of a point $V$ of the Grassmannian. We show that such a polynomial is stable (with respect to the upper half plane) if and only if $V$ is in the totally nonnegative part of the Grassmannian. To prove this, we consider an action of matrices on multiaffine polynomials. We show that a matrix $A$ preserves stability of polynomials if and only if $A$ is totally nonnegative. The proofs are applications of classical theory of totally nonnegative matrices, and the generalized Pólya-Schur theory of Borcea and Brändén.

Continuous-time discrete-state random Markov chains generated by a random linear differential equation with a random tridiagonal matrix are shown to have a random attractor consisting of singleton subsets, essentially a random path, in the simplex of probability vectors. The proof uses comparison theorems for Carathéodory random differential equations and the fact that the linear cocycle generated by the Markov chain is a uniformly contractive mapping of the positive cone into itself with respect to the Hilbert projective metric. It does not involve probabilistic properties of the sample path and is thus equally valid in the nonautonomous deterministic context of Markov chains with, say, periodically varying transition probabilities, in which case the attractor is a periodic path.