What are the matrices that you can write in the form $X \odot X^{-T}$, for a complex square matrix $X$, where $X^{-T}$ is the inverse of the *complex transpose* (not conjugate) and $\odot$ is the Hadamard (component-by-component) product?

In the  $2\times 2$ case, you get the group of matrices in the form $$\begin{bmatrix}a & b\\\\ b & a \end{bmatrix},$$ with $a+b=1$, which are closed under matrix multiplication and would form a group were it not for the matrix $a=b=\frac12$ which admits no inverse [EDIT: corrected this assertion, thanks to Denis Serre]. In larger dimension, one sees that all the obtained matrices have the vector of all ones as both a right and left eigenvector. Is this the only restriction? Is the resulting set of matrices closed under multiplication? Is this problem known and studied?

Origin: motivated from [this MO question][1].


  [1]: https://mathoverflow.net/questions/62390/on-a-tentative-generalization-of-the-schmidt-decomposition