Eventual Positivity of a Class of Double Star-like Sign Patterns

Abstract

Identifying and classifying the potentially eventually positive sign patterns and the potentially eventually exponentially positive sign patterns of orders greater than 3 have been raised as two open problems since 2010. In this article, we investigate the potential eventual positivity of the class of double star-like sign patterns S(n,m,1) whose underlying graph G(S(n,m,1)) is obtained from the underlying graph G(S(n,m)) of the (n+m)-by-(n+m) double star sign patterns S(n,m) by adding an additional vertex adjacent to the two center vertices and removing the edge between the center vertices. We firstly establish some necessary conditions for a double star-like sign pattern to be potentially eventually positive, and then identify all the minimal potentially eventually positive double star-like sign patterns. Secondly, we classify all the potentially eventually positive sign patterns in the class of double star-like sign patterns S(n,m,1). Finally, as an application of our results about the potentially eventually positive double star-like sign patterns, we identify all the minimal potentially eventually exponentially positive sign patterns and characterize all the potentially eventually exponentially positive sign patterns in the class of double star-like sign patterns S(n,m,1).