It is shown that for $n \le 3$ the joint numerical range of a family commuting $n\times n$ complex matrices always convex; \ge 4$ there are two whose not convex.

Introducing the concept of the normalized duality mapping on normed linear space and normed algebra, we extend the usual definitions of the numerical range from one operator to two operators. In this note we study the convexity of these types of numerical ranges in normed algebras and linear spaces. We establish some Birkhoff-James orthogonality results in terms of the algebra numerical range V...

We consider linearly independent families of Hermitian matrices {A1, . . . , Am} so thatWk(A) is convex. It is shown that m can reach the upper bound 2k(n− k) + 1. A key idea in our study is relating the convexity of Wk(A) to the problem of constructing rank k orthogonal projections under linear constraints determined by A. The techniques are extended to study the convexity of other generalized...