Principal Minors and Absolute Values

Source abstract

We prove that the principal minors of an orthogonal projection matrix determine the coordinatewise absolute value of its image. More precisely, if $W_1,W_2\subset \mathbb{C}^n$ are subspaces whose orthogonal projection matrices have equal corresponding principal minors of all orders, then $|W_1|=|W_2|$, where $|W|$ is the image of $W$ under the coordinatewise absolute value map. The proof is divided into different cases related to the connectivity of the associated matroids. We provide a stratification of the Grassmannian in terms of the connectivity levels and give a structure theorem for the elements of each stratum.