Empirical bounds for commuting dilations of free unitaries and the universal commuting dilation constant

For a tuple $T$ of Hilbert space operators, the ‘commuting dilation constant’ is the smallest number $c$ such that the operators of $T$ are a simultaneous compression of commuting normal operators of norm at most $c$. We present numerical experiments giving a strong indication that the commuting dilation constant of a pair of independent random $N{\times}N$ unitary matrices converges to $\sqrt2$ as $N \to \infty$ almost surely. Under the assumption that this is the case, we prove that the commuting dilation constant of an arbitrary pair of contractions is strictly smaller than $2$. Our experiments are based on a simple algorithm that we introduce for the purpose of computing dilation constants between tuples of matrices.

💡 Research Summary

The paper investigates the “commuting‑dilation constant’’ $c(T)$ for a tuple $T$ of operators on a Hilbert space, defined as the smallest scalar $c$ such that $T$ can be realized as a simultaneous compression of a commuting family of normal operators whose norms are bounded by $c$. The main object of study is the universal constant
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