Maximal exponents of polyhedral cones (II)

Let K be a proper (i.e., closed, pointed, full convex) cone in Rn. An n×n matrix A is said to be K-primitive if there exists a positive integer k such that ; the least such k is referred to as the exponent of A and is denoted by γ(A). For a polyhedral cone K, the maximum value of γ(A), taken over all K-primitive matrices A, is called the exponent of K and is denoted by γ(K). It is proved that the maximum value of γ(K) as K runs through all n-dimensional minimal cones (i.e., cones having n+1 extreme rays) is n2-n+1 if n is odd, and is n2-n if n is even, the maximum value of the exponent being attained by a minimal cone with a balanced relation for its extreme vectors. The K-primitive matrices A such that γ(A) attain the maximum value are identified up to cone-equivalence modulo positive scalar multiplication.