Contractive determinantal representations of stable polynomials on a matrix polyball

Abstract: We show that an irreducible polynomial $p$ with no zeros on the closure of a matrix unit polyball, a.k.a. a cartesian product of Cartan domains of type I, and such that $p(0)=1$, admits a strictly contractive determinantal representation, i.e., $p=\det(I-KZ_n)$, where $n=(n_1,...,n_k)$ is a $k$-tuple of nonnegative integers, $Z_n=\bigoplus_{r=1}^k(Z^{(r)}\otimes I_{n_r})$, $Z^{(r)}=[z^{(r)}_{ij}]$ are complex matrices, $p$ is a polynomial in the matrix entries $z^{(r)}_{ij}$, and $K$ is a strictly contractive matrix. This result is obtained via a noncommutative lifting and a theorem on the singularities of minimal noncommutative structured system realizations.