Bures Geodesics and Restricted Barycenters for Kronecker Positive Definite Matrices

Abstract

We study the extrinsic Bures--Wasserstein geometry of the determinant-normalized Kronecker model $\mcK_n=\{V\ot U:U,V\in\Sp^n,\ \det U=1\}\subset\Sp^{n^2}$, asking when the ambient Bures geodesic between two Kronecker positive definite matrices can remain in this lower-dimensional model. Local membership near an endpoint is shown to be equivalent to membership of the whole segment, and this happens exactly in the one-factor cases: either $U_1=U_0$ or $V_1$ is a positive scalar multiple of $V_0$. Consequently, any endpoint pair not confined to these one-factor alternatives leaves the model immediately. The criterion is expressed by a partial-trace residual. In fixed commuting charts it becomes an equivalent rank-one square-root profile and yields computable departure diagnostics. We also obtain exact formulas for two restricted barycenter problems: fixed commuting-coordinate slices, solved by Perron singular vectors, and one-factor subfamilies, reduced to standard Bures--Wasserstein barycenters on $\Sp^n$.