Lattice properties of the sharp partial order

Abstract The aim of this paper is to study lattice properties of the sharp partial order for complex matrices having index at most 1. We investigate the down-set of a fixed matrix B under this partial order via isomorphisms with two different partially ordered sets of projectors. These are the set of projectors that commute with a certain (nonsingular) block of a Hartwig-Spindelböck decomposition of B and the set of projectors that commute with the Jordan canonical form of that block. Using these isomorphisms, we study the lattice structure of the down-sets and we give properties of them. Necessary and sufficient conditions under which the down-set of B is a lattice were found, in which case we describe its elements completely. We also show that every down-set of B has a distinguished Boolean subalgebra and we give a description of its elements. We characterize the matrices that are above a given matrix in terms of its Jordan canonical form. Mitra (1987) showed that the set of all $$n \times n$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>n</mml:mi> <mml:mo>×</mml:mo> <mml:mi>n</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> complex matrices having index at most 1 when $$n\ge 4$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>n</mml:mi> <mml:mo>≥</mml:mo> <mml:mn>4</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> is not a lower semilattice. We extend this result to $$n=3$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>n</mml:mi> <mml:mo>=</mml:mo> <mml:mn>3</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> and prove that it is a lower semilattice when $$n=2$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>n</mml:mi> <mml:mo>=</mml:mo> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> . We also answer negatively a conjecture given by Mitra, Bhimasankaram and Malik (2010). As a last application, we characterize solutions of some matrix equations via the established isomorphisms.