Conditioning of solutions to the Sylvester equation

We partially answer an open problem, posed by Nick Higham, concerning the conditioning of solutions to Sylvester and Lyapunov equations. The question arises in the backward stability analysis of numerical algorithms for these equations. We first show that the solution to the Sylvester equation $AX-XB = C$ can be arbitrarily ill-conditioned even if $A, B, C$ and the Kronecker sum $I \otimes A - B^T \otimes I$ are all perfectly conditioned. We then derive general a priori bounds on the condition number of the solution, as well as bounds for the Sylvester equation when $A$ and $B$ are diagonalizable. We also provide lower bounds involving matrix exponentials and Zolotarev numbers. For the Lyapunov equation $AX+XA^T = -C$, we obtain upper bounds in two settings: (i) when $A$ is symmetric positive definite while $C$ is symmetric negative definite, and (ii) when $A$ is strictly dissipative and $C$ is symmetric positive definite.