Undecidability of testing whether the joint spectral radius is at least one

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Let Σ\Sigma be a finite set of matrices, and let the joint spectral radius ρ(Σ)\rho(\Sigma) be defined by

ρ(Σ)=lim⁡n→∞max⁡M1,…,Mn∈Σ∥M1⋯Mn∥n.\rho(\Sigma)=\lim_{n\to\infty}\sqrt[n]{\max_{M_1,\dots,M_n\in\Sigma}\|M_1\cdots M_n\|}.

Undecidability conjecture. It is undecidable to check whether ρ≥1\rho\geq 1 for the joint spectral radius ρ\rho.

The paper notes that the corresponding questions for ρ≤1\rho\leq 1 and ρ=1\rho=1 are undecidable, whereas the threshold ρ≥1\rho\geq 1 remains open. This is relevant to the decidability of growth rates of bilinear maps.

References

Primary source

Vuong Bui, “Growth of bilinear maps III: Decidability”, arXiv:2201.09850 (2025).

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