RANK-PRESERVING OPERATORS OF NONNEGATIVE INTEGER MATRICES

The set of all $m\;{\times}\;n$ matrices with entries in $\mathbb{Z}_+$ is de­noted by $\mathbb{M}{m{\times}n}(\mathbb{Z}_+)$. We say that a linear operator T on $\mathbb{M}{m{\times}n}(\mathbb{Z}_+)$ is a (U, V)-operator if there exist invertible matrices $U\;{\in}\; \mathbb{M}{m{\times}n}(\mathbb{Z}_+)$ and $V\;{\in}\;\mathbb{M}{m{\times}n}(\mathbb{Z}_+)$ such that either T(X) = UXV for all X in $\mathbb{M}{m{\times}n}(\mathbb{Z}_+)$, or m = n and T(X) = $UX^{t}V$ for all X in $\mathbb{M}{m{\times}n}(\mathbb{Z}_+)$. In this paper we show that a linear operator T preserves the rank of matrices over the nonnegative integers if and only if T is a (U, V)­operator. We also obtain other characterizations of the linear operator that preserves rank of matrices over the nonnegative integers.