A model theoretic perspective on matrix rings

Abstract In this paper natural necessary and sufficient conditions for quantifier elimination of matrix rings $$M_n(K)$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:msub> <mml:mi>M</mml:mi> <mml:mi>n</mml:mi> </mml:msub> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>(</mml:mo> <mml:mi>K</mml:mi> <mml:mo>)</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> in the language of rings expanded by two unary functions, naming the trace and transposition, are identified. This is used together with invariant theory to prove quantifier elimination when K is an intersection of real closed fields. On the other hand, it is shown that finding a natural definable expansion with quantifier elimination of the theory of $$M_n(\mathbb {C})$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:msub> <mml:mi>M</mml:mi> <mml:mi>n</mml:mi> </mml:msub> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>(</mml:mo> <mml:mi>C</mml:mi> <mml:mo>)</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> is closely related to the infamous simultaneous conjugacy problem in matrix theory. Finally, for various natural structures describing dimension-free matrices it is shown that no such elimination results can hold by establishing undecidability results.