  Linear matrix equations, such as the Sylvester and Lyapunov equations, play
an important role in various applications, including the stability analysis and
dimensionality reduction of linear dynamical control systems and the solution
of partial differential equations. In this work, we present and analyze a new
algorithm, based on tensorized Krylov subspaces, for quickly updating the
solution of such a matrix equation when its coefficients undergo low-rank
changes. We demonstrate how our algorithm can be utilized to accelerate the
Newton method for solving continuous-time algebraic Riccati equations. Our
algorithm also forms the basis of a new divide-and-conquer approach for linear
matrix equations with coefficients that feature hierarchical low-rank
structure, such as HODLR, HSS, and banded matrices. Numerical experiments
demonstrate the advantages of divide-and-conquer over existing approaches, in
terms of computational time and memory consumption.
