Effectively bounded idempotent generation of certain $2\times 2$ singular matrices by idempotent matrices over real quadratic number rings

Let $k=\mathbb{Q}(\sqrt{\alpha })$ be a real quadratic number field, where $\alpha$ is a positive square-free integer. Let ${\mathcal{O}}_k$ be the ring of integers of $k$. In this paper, we prove that a certain set of $2\times 2$ singular matrices with entries in ${\mathcal{O}}_k$ can be written as a product of a bounded number of idempotent matrices. Our main theorem can be viewed as a generalization of the recent result by Cossu and Zanardo, which studies finite generation of certain singular matrices by idempotent matrices over ${\mathcal{O}}_k$ instead of bounded generation of certain singular matrices by idempotent matrices over ${\mathcal{O}}_k$ as considered in this paper.