Spanning-tree extensions of the Hadamard-Fischer inequalities (Q1089349)

All possible graph-theoretic generalizations of a certain sort for the Hadamard-Fischer determinantal inequalities are determined. These involve ratios of products of principal minors which dominate the determinant. Furthermore, the cases of equality in these inequalities are characterized, and equality is possible for every set of values which can occur for the relevant minors. This relates recent work of the authors on positive definite completions and determinantal identities. When applied to the same collections of principal minors, earlier generalizations give poorer, more difficult to compute bounds than the present inequalities. Thus, this work extends, and in a certain sense completes, a series of generalizations of Hadamard-Fischer begun in the 1960s.