LINEAR OPERATORS THAT PRESERVE PERIMETERS OF BOOLEAN MATRICES

Abstract

For a Boolean rank 1 matrix $A=ab^t$, we define the perimeter of A as the number of nonzero entries in both a and b. The perimeter of an $m{\times}n$ Boolean matrix A is the minimum of the perimeters of the rank-1 decompositions of A. In this article we characterize the linear operators that preserve the perimeters of Boolean matrices.