Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 June 2020
We obtain several norm and eigenvalue inequalities for positive matrices partitioned into four blocks. The results involve the numerical range $W(X)$ of the off-diagonal block
$X$, especially the distance
$d$ from
$0$ to
$W(X)$. A special consequence is an estimate,
$$\begin{eqnarray}\text{diam}\,W\left(\left[\begin{array}{@{}cc@{}}A & X\\ X^{\ast } & B\end{array}\right]\right)-\text{diam}\,W\biggl(\frac{A+B}{2}\biggr)\geq 2d,\end{eqnarray}$$
The first author was funded by the ANR Project No. ANR-19-CE40-0002 and by the French Investissements d’Avenir program, project ISITE-BFC (contract ANR-15-IDEX-03). The second author was supported by the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education (NRF-2018R1D1A3B07043682).