If I take the anti-commutator of two positive operators $A,B$ on a Hilbert space, $AB+BA$ is again guaranteed to be Hermitian, but is it also necessarily positive?
Positivity of the anti-commutator of two positive operators
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linear-algebra
functional-analysis
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0A=\begin{bmatrix}1&0\\0&0\end{bmatrix} and B=\begin{bmatrix}1&1\\1&1\end{bmatrix} gives a counterexample. You could post an answer to your own question if you want to. – 2012-01-28
1 Answers
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Since the "next time" never came for the OP, I post the counterexample given by Jonas Meyer.
Let $A=\begin{pmatrix}1&0\\0&0\end{pmatrix}$ and $B=\begin{pmatrix}1&1\\1&1\end{pmatrix}$, then $AB+BA=\begin{pmatrix}2&1\\1&0\end{pmatrix}$ has negative determinant.