A note on an unusual type of polar decomposition

Motivated by applications in the theory of unitary congruence, we introduce the factorization of a square complex matrix A of the form A=SU, where S is complex symmetric and U is unitary. We call this factorization a symmetric–unitary polar decomposition or an SUPD. It is shown that an SUPD exists for every matrix A and is always nonunique. Even the symmetric factor S can be chosen in infinitely many ways. Nevertheless, we show that many properties of the conventional polar decomposition related to normal matrices have their counterparts for the SUPD, provided that normal matrices are replaced with conjugate–normal ones.