Trace Invariance for Quaternion Matrices

Let F be a f ield. It is a classical result in linear algebra that for each A, P ϵ Mn (F) such that P is nonsingular, tr A = tr (PAP-1). We show in this paper that the preceding property does not hold true if F is the division ring of real quaternions. We show that the only quaternion matrices that have their trace invariant under unitary similarity are Hermitian matrices, and that the only matrices that have their trace invariant under similarity are real scalar matrices.