THEOREM 1. Let S be an n x n complex matrix and m be a nonnegative integer. Then the following three statements are equivalent to each other:
(1.1) S E g”” (i.e., S is a Product of 2m positive definite hermitian
matrices) ;
(1.2) S is similar to an element of gzm;
(1.3) S is similar to an element of Y2m--1 ;
and also the following thzree statements are equivalent to each other:
(1.1’) s Egznt+‘;
(1.2’) S is conjunctive with an element of 9@m+1;
(1.3’) S is conjunctive with alz element of 92m.
Remark. Since I E 8, we can apply [2, Corollary 1.21 in this context, but it tells us just the known fact that the subgroup generated by 9’ isnormal in 9(c). This subgroup is S+(c), which is well known to be normal in 9(c). We shall show later (in Theorem 5) that actually P(c) = g5. Next we have the following analog of [2, Theorem 21. THEOREM 2. Let S be an n x n complex matrix. Then the following four statements aye equivalent (to each other):
(2.1) S E g2 (i.e., S is a Product of two positive definite hermitian
matrices) ;
(2.2) S is similar to an element of Y2;
(2.3) S is similar to an element of 9’;
(2.4) S is unitarily similar to a diagonable lower triangular matrix of positive diagonal. (Note: In this paper “diagonable” means “similar over the complex field to a diagonal matrix.“)
Proof. The proof of Theorem 2 is entirely analogous to that of [2, Theorem 21, and so will not be given explicitly here.
Theorem 2, like its real analog [2, Theorem 21, can be easily derived also from Taussky’s result. (See [5, p. 11271 for further references, and see Remark 3 of Section 7 for further nasc for P2.)