When is a matrix unitary or Hermitian plus low rank?

Hermitian and unitary matrices are two representatives of the class of normal matrices whose full eigenvalue decomposition can be stably computed in quadratic computing complexity once the matrix has been reduced, for instance, to tridiagonal or Hessenberg form. Recently, fast and reliable eigensolvers dealing with low-rank perturbations of unitary and Hermitian matrices have been proposed. These structured eigenvalue problems appear naturally when computing roots, via confederate linearizations, of polynomials expressed in, for example, the monomial or Chebyshev basis. Often, however, it is not known beforehand whether or not a matrix can be written as the sum of a Hermitian or unitary matrix plus a low-rank perturbation. In this paper, we give necessary and sufficient conditions characterizing the class of Hermitian or unitary plus low-rank matrices. The number of singular values deviating from 1 determines the rank of a perturbation to bring a matrix to unitary form. A similar condition holds for Hermitian matrices; the eigenvalues of the skew-Hermitian part differing from 0 dictate the rank of the perturbation. We prove that these relations are linked via the Cayley transform. Then, based on these conditions, we identify the closest Hermitian or unitary plus rank k matrix to a given matrix A, in Frobenius and spectral norm, and give a formula for their distance from A. Finally, we present a practical iteration to detect the low-rank perturbation. Numerical tests prove that this straightforward algorithm is effective.