For a block upper triangular matrix, a necessary and sufficient condition has been given to let it be the sum of block upper rectangular matrices satisfying certain rank constraints; see H. Bart, A. P. M. Wagelmans (2000). The proof involves elements from integer programming and employs Farkas' lemma. The algebra of block upper triangular matrices can be viewed as a matrix algebra determined by a pattern of zeros. The present note is concerned with the question whether the decomposition result referred...

An $m\times n$ matrix $R$ with nonnegative entries is called row stochastic if the sum of entries on every row of $R$ is 1. Let ${𝐌}_{m,n}$ be the set of all $m\times n$ real matrices. For $A,B\in {𝐌}_{m,n}$, we say that $A$ is row Hadamard majorized by $B$ (denoted by $A{\prec }_{RH}B)$ if there exists an $m\times n$ row stochastic matrix $R$ such that $A=R\circ B$, where $X\circ Y$ is the Hadamard product (entrywise product) of matrices $X,Y\in {𝐌}_{m,n}$. In this paper, we consider the concept of row Hadamard majorization as a relation on ${𝐌}_{m,n}$ and characterize the structure of all linear operators $T:{𝐌}_{m,n}\to {𝐌}_{m,n}$ preserving (or...