Eigenvalues of locally positive semidefinite matrices: Non-convexity and Geometry

Abstract

A real symmetric matrix is called $d$-locally positive semidefinite if all of its $d \times d$ principal submatrices are positive semidefinite. We investigate the spectral geometry of $d$-locally positive semidefinite matrices. The set of vectors of eigenvalues of $d$-locally positive semidefinite matrices of size $n \times n$ is fully understood and known to be convex when $d \in \{1,n-1,n\}$ \cite{blekherman2022hyperbolic}. In the smallest remaining case $n=4, d=2$, non-convexity of the set of vectors of eigenvalues was proved in \cite{kozhasov2023eigenvalues}, but even in this case the full description was unknown. We provide a basic semialgebraic description of the set of vectors of eigenvalues for $n=4, d=2$ by establishing a Fischer-type inequality for $2$-locally positive semidefinite matrices of size $4 \times 4$ and prove non-convexity for $n \geq 4$ and $d \in \{2, n-2\}$. Non-convexity is established via solving certain non-smooth and non-convex min-max point configuration problems in the complex plane, which could be interesting in themselves. Similar problems were considered in \cite{nesterenko2024submatrices,sengupta2026submatrices} in the context of matrix decomposition and approximation.