On decomposing any matrix as a linear combination of three idempotents

Abstract

In a recent article, we gave a full characterization of matrices that can be decomposed as a linear combination of two idempotents with prescribed coefficients. In this one, we use those results to improve on a recent theorem of V. Rabanovich: we establish that every square matrix is a linear combination of three idempotents (for an arbitrary coefficient field rather than just a field of characteristic 0).