A conjecture concerning *-algebras that unifies some matrix decompositions

Abstract

In this note, we propose a simple-looking but broad conjecture about star-algebras over the field of real numbers. The conjecture enables many matrix decompositions to be represented by star-algebras and star-ideals. This paper is written for people with a background in representation theory and module theory. The motivation for investigating this is the possibility of expressing polymorphic algorithms in numerical and theoretical linear algebra. This is similar to but different from algebraic (semiring based) approaches to dynamic programming. We prove certain cases of the conjecture.