Principal Submatrices of a Hermitian Matrix

Suppose k 1 ,<, k m and n are positive integers such that k 1 + … + k m h n . We characterize those k i × k i Hermitian matrices A i , i = 1, < , m that can appear as diagonal blocks of an n × n Hermitian matrix C with prescribed eigenvalues. The characterization will be given in terms of the eigenvalues of C and A i , i = 1, <, m . Our results extend those of Thompson and Freede, Horn, Fan and Pall.