The NIEP

Abstract

The nonnegative inverse eigenvalue problem (NIEP) asks which lists of $n$ complex numbers (counting multiplicity) occur as the eigenvalues of some $n$-by-$n$ entry-wise nonnegative matrix. The NIEP has a long history and is a known hard (perhaps the hardest in matrix analysis?) and sought after problem. Thus, there are many subproblems and relevant results in a variety of directions. We survey most work on the problem and its several variants, with an emphasis on recent results, and include 130 references. The survey is divided into: a) the single eigenvalue problems; b) necessary conditions; c) low dimensional results; d) sufficient conditions; e) appending 0's to achieve realizability; f) the graph NIEP's; g) Perron similarities; and h) the relevance of Jordan structure.