Matricial logarithmic derivatives

If θ is a norm on Cⁿ, then the mapping $\text{A→}\text{lim}{}_{\mathrm{h\downarrow 0}}\text{6I+hA6}{}_{\mathrm{\theta }}\text{?1}\text{/h}$ from M_n(C) (=C^{n × n}) into R is called the logarithmic derivative induced by the vector norm θ. In this paper we generalize this concept to a mapping γ from M_n(C) into M_k(R), where k ? n. Denoting by α(B) the spectral abscissa of a square matrix B (the largest of the real parts of the eigenvalues), we show, in particular, that α(A) ?α(γ(A)). As a byproduct we obtain simple sufficient conditions for the stability of a matrix.