The Matricial Range of $E_{21}$

Abstract

The matricial range of the $2\times2$ matrix $E_{21}$ (i.e., the $2\times 2$ unilateral shift) is described very simply: it consists of all matrices with numerical radius at most $1/2$. The known proofs of this simple statement, however, are far from trivial and they depend on subtle results on dilations. We offer here a brief introduction to the matricial range and a recap of those two proofs, following independent work of Arveson and Ando in the early 1970s.