Witt rings of complete skew fields

Witt rings of quadratically presentable fields

This paper introduces an approach to the axiomatic theory of quadratic forms based on {tmem{presentable}} partially ordered sets, that is partially ordered sets subject to additional conditions which amount to a strong form of local presentability. It turns out that the classical notion of the Witt ring of symmetric bilinear forms over a field makes sense in the context of {tmem{quadratically p...

Characterizing Reduced Witt Rings of Fields

Let IV(F) denote the Mitt ring of nondegenerate symmetric bilinear forms over a field F. In this paper wc shall be concerned only with formally real fields, for which we write Wr,,l(F) ~mm W(F)/Wil W(F) for the reduced R’itt ring. In [13, 141 the rings W(F) and iTred are shown to be special cases of absfrart lWtt rirqs and a great deal of the ring structure is developed in this setting. In [6] ...

Complete fields and valuation rings

In order to make further progress in our investigation of finite extensions L/K of the fraction field K of a Dedekind domain A, and in particular, to determine the primes p of K that ramify in L, we introduce a new tool that allows us to “localize” fields. We have seen how useful it can be to localize the ring A at a prime ideal p: this yields a discrete valuation ring Ap, a principal ideal dom...

Witt Rings and Matroids

The study of Witt rings of formally real fields in the algebraic theory of quadratic forms has led to a particularly good understanding of the finitely generated torsion free Witt rings. In this paper, we work primarily with a somewhat more general class of rings which can be completely characterized by (binary) matroids. The different types of standard constructions and invariants coming from ...

Characterizing Reduced Witt Rings Ii