An Operator Theoretic Approach to Birkhoff's Problem 111

Abstract: In 1946, Garrett Birkhoff proved that the $n\times n$ doubly stochastic matrices comprise the convex hull of the $n\times n$ permutation matrices, which in turn make up the extreme points of this polytope. He proposed his problem 111, which asks whether there exists a topology on infinite matrices for which this applies to the closed convex hull of the $\mathbb{N}\times\mathbb{N}$ permutation matrices. As Isbell showed in 1955, this equality is not achieved in the line-sum norm. In this paper, we use the domain of operator theory, and its many topologies, to improve on his negative result by showing that Birkhoff's problem is not solved in any of these topologies. In Kendall's 1960 paper on this problem, he gave an answer to the affirmative, as well as a topology for which closed convex hull comprises the doubly substochastic matrices. We also show that Kendall's secondary theorem also applies for all the locally convex Hausdorff topologies finer than than Kendall's (namely that of entry-wise convergence) which make the continuous dual of the matrix space no larger than the predual of the von Neumann algebra containing them. We then show that this is a theoretical upper limit topologies with this closure property. We also discuss the exposed points of this hull for these several topologies. Moreover, we show that, in these topologies, the closed affine hull of these permutation matrices comprise all operators with real-entry matrix coefficients.