# If matrix product $AB$ is a square, then is $BA$ a square matrix?

## Problem 263

Let $A$ and $B$ are matrices such that the matrix product $AB$ is defined and $AB$ is a square matrix.
Is it true that the matrix product $BA$ is also defined and $BA$ is a square matrix? If it is true, then prove it. If not, find a counterexample.

## Definition/Hint.

Let $A$ be an $m\times n$ matrix.
This means that the matrix $A$ has $m$ rows and $n$ columns.

Let $B$ be an $r \times s$ matrix.
Then the matrix product $AB$ is defined if $n=r$, that is, if the number of columns of $A$ is equal to the number of rows of $B$.

Definition. A matrix $C$ is called a square matrix if the size of $C$ is $n\times n$ for some positive integer $n$.
(The number of rows and the number of columns are the same.)

## Proof.

We prove that the matrix product $BA$ is defined and it is a square matrix.

Let $A$ be an $m\times n$ matrix and $B$ be an $r\times s$ matrix.

Since the matrix product $AB$ is defined, we must have $n=r$ and the size of $AB$ is $m\times s$.
Since $AB$ is a square matrix, we have $m=s$.

Thus the size of the matrix $B$ is $n \times m$.
From this, we see that the product $BA$ is defined and its size is $n \times n$, hence it is a square matrix.

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