Fortuna's entrywise nonnegativity conjecture for Lyapunov solutions with companion state matrices

Let

a(s)=sn+an1sn1+an2sn2++a1s+a0a(s)=s^n+a_{n-1}s^{n-1}+a_{n-2}s^{n-2}+\dots+a_1s+a_0

be a Hurwitz polynomial, and let ARn×nA\in\mathbb{R}^{n\times n} be its companion matrix,

A=[010000100001a0a1a2an1].A=\begin{bmatrix}0&1&0&\dots&0\\0&0&1&\ddots&0\vdots&\ddots&\ddots&\ddots&\ddots\\0&0&0&\dots&1\\-a_0&-a_1&-a_2&\dots&-a_{n-1}\end{bmatrix}.

Let Q=QRn×nQ=Q^{\top}\in\mathbb{R}^{n\times n} satisfy Q0Q\succeq0, and let XX be the unique solution of

XA+AX=Q.XA+A^{\top}X=-Q.

Fortuna's conjecture. The solution XX is entrywise nonnegative.

Standard Lyapunov theory gives that XX is symmetric and positive semidefinite. The paper proves this claim when the companion matrix has only real eigenvalues, while the general assertion remains unresolved in the supplied text.

Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

Augusto Ferrante, “On the Lyapunov equation with the state matrix in companion form”, arXiv:2606.16492 (2026).

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