Counting Spectral Radii of Matrices with Positive Entries

The sum-product conjecture of Erd\H os and Szemer\'edi states that, given a finite set $A$ of positive numbers, one can find asymptotic lower bounds for $\max\{|A+A|,|A\cdot A|\}$ of the order of $|A|^{1+\delta}$ for every $\delta <1$. In this paper we consider the set of all spectral radii of $n\times n$ matrices with entries in $A$, and find lower bounds for the cardinality of this set. In the case $n=2$, this cardinality is necessarily larger than $\max\{|A+A|,|A\cdot A|\}$.