Hurwitz numbers count branched covers of the Riemann sphere with specified ramification data, or equivalently, transitive permutation factorizations in the symmetric group with specified cycle types. Monotone Hurwitz numbers count a restricted subset of these branched covers related to the expansion of complete symmetric functions in the Jucys-Murphy elements, and have arisen in recent work on the the asymptotic expansion of the Harish-Chandra-Itzykson-Zuber integral. In this paper we begin a detailed study of monotone Hurwitz numbers. We prove two results that are reminiscent of those for classical Hurwitz numbers. The first is the monotone join-cut equation, a partial differential equation with initial conditions that characterizes the generating function for monotone Hurwitz numbers in arbitrary genus. The second is our main result, in which we give an explicit formula for monotone Hurwitz numbers in genus zero.

We introduce and study a remarkable family of real probability measures $\pi_{st}$ that we call free Bessel laws. These are related to the free Poisson law $\pi$ via the formulae $\pi_{s1}=\pi^{\boxtimes s}$ and ${\pi_{1t}=\pi^{\boxplus t}}$. Our study includes definition and basic properties, analytic aspects (supports, atoms, densities), combinatorial aspects (functional transforms, moments, partitions), and a discussion of the relation with random matrices and quantum groups.

Let ${ M}_n$ be the algebra of all $n \times n$ matrices over $\mathbb{C}$. We say that $A, B \in { M}_n$ quasi-commute if there exists a nonzero $\xi \in \mathbb{C}$ such that $AB = \xi BA$. In the paper we classify bijective not necessarily linear maps $\Phi \colon M_n \to M_n$ which preserve quasi-commutativity in both directions.

Hua's fundamental theorem of the geometry of hermitian matrices characterizes bijective maps on the space of all $n\times n$ hermitian matrices preserving adjacency in both directions. The problem of possible improvements has been open for a while. There are three natural problems here. Do we need the bijectivity assumption? Can we replace the assumption of preserving adjacency in both directions by the weaker assumption of preserving adjacency in one direction only? Can we obtain such a characterization for maps acting between the spaces of hermitian matrices of different sizes? We answer all three questions for the complex hermitian matrices, thus obtaining the optimal structural result for adjacency preserving maps on hermitian matrices over the complex field.

We give bounds on the distance from a non-zero idempotent to the set of nilpotents in the set of $n\times n$ matrices in terms of the norm of the idempotent. We construct explicit idempotents and nilpotents which achieve these distances, and determine exact distances in some special cases.

We explicitly describe the best approximation in geodesic submanifolds of positive definite matrices obtained from involutive congruence transformations on the Cartan-Hadamard manifold ${\mathrm{Sym}}(n,{\Bbb R})^{++}$ of positive definite matrices. An explicit calculation for the minimal distance function from the geodesic submanifold ${\mathrm{Sym}}(p,{\mathbb R})^{++}\times {\mathrm{Sym}}(q,{\mathbb R})^{++}$ block diagonally embedded in ${\mathrm{Sym}}(n,{\mathbb R})^{++}$ is given in terms of metric and spectral geometric means, Cayley transform, and Schur complements of positive definite matrices when $p\leq 2$ or $q\leq 2.$

Let $\mathcal{H}_n$ be the real linear space of $n\times n$ complex Hermitian matrices. The unitary (similarity) orbit $\mathcal{U} (C)$ of $C \in \mathcal{H}_n$ is the collection of all matrices unitarily similar to $C$. We characterize those $C \in \mathcal{H}_n$ such that every matrix in the convex hull of $\mathcal{U}(C)$ can be written as the average of two matrices in $\mathcal{U}(C)$. The result is used to study spectral properties of submatrices of matrices in $\mathcal{U}(C)$, the convexity of images of $\mathcal{U} (C)$ under linear transformations, and some related questions concerning the joint $C$-numerical range of Hermitian matrices. Analogous results on real symmetric matrices are also discussed.